
Class J=A2i2I: 

Book_^_^. 

CoipgtaN" 

COPmiGHT DEPOSm 



Universities and Scientific Life 
in the United States 



BY 

MAUEICE CAULLERY 

Professor at the Sorbonne 
Fbench Exchange Professor at Harvard University, 1916 



TRANSLATED BY 

MMES HAUGHTON WOODS 

AND 

EMMET RUSSELL 
The world has been remade in the last half -century.** 

CHARLES W. ELIOT 






CAMBRIDGE 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 

Oxford University Press 

1922 



ir 






COPYRIGHT, 1922 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 



©C!,A659088 



MAR 1 i 1922 



TO MY FRIENDS AT HARVARD 

AND IN PARTICULAR 

TO 

GEORGE HOWARD PARKER 



PREFACE 

THIS book is based on observations and impressions 
which I gathered during a stay of five months in the 
United States. 

As a biologist, I describe the university landscape 
above all from the scientific and more specially from the 
biological point of view, but with the design of making 
the whole of it understood and of setting it into the gen- 
eral framework of contemporary American society. 

During the second half-year of 1915-16, I had the 
honor of being Exchange Professor at Harvard Univer- 
sity. And my first word here must be to affirm, once 
more, the very great utility of exchanges of professors 
between French and American universities. They are 
among the most efficacious means of helping the two 
countries to know, esteem and aid one another. The 
great mass cannot cross the Atlantic; but if the educa- 
tors of youth have done so, they may help to dissipate 
many prejudices. They are almost bound, it seems to 
me, not to keep to themselves the experience acquired, 
however incomplete their observations may often be. 
That is what has determined me to write the following 
pages. I wish that they may make better known in 
France an aspect of American democracy, which is not 
that under which we are most commonly led to look at 
it, and also that they may emphasize the efforts which 
the immediate consequences of the war imperiously 
oblige us to make without delay. 



vi PREFACE 

It is my duty — and a very pleasant one — to in- 
scribe, at the beginning of this book, my best gratitude 
for the welcome I received in America. American hos- 
pitality was shown me from the time I set foot on New 
York soil. On my arrival in Cambridge, President 
Lowell received me in his house, and my first impression 
of Harvard was that of the simple cordiality which is 
the charm of the Harvard community, and which unites 
all its members, from the president down to young 
freshmen. Everywhere, in New York, Boston, Balti- 
more, Princeton, Yale, Chicago, and at San Diego on 
the Pacific, I found friends and colleagues to welcome 
me with the same affectionate eagerness. 

Likewise I received favors on the part of learned 
bodies. I felt particularly the honor which the American 
Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Sci- 
ences did me in inviting me as a guest at Easter 1916 to 
their meetings in Philadelphia and in Washington. 

I have also to thank the clubs — particularly the 
Colonial Club at Cambridge and the Harvard Clubs of 
Boston and New York — which, by opening their doors 
to me during my entire stay, added to its ease and in- 
creased its delight. 

My colleagues at Harvard, especially those of the 
department of Zoology, welcomed me with an eagerness 
which the tales of my predecessors had made me ex- 
pect, but which touched me none the less. At Harvard, 
they know how to make the newcomer forget, from the 
first day, that he is a stranger, and to give him the il- 
lusion of being a regular and permanent member of the 
university. Friends watch attentively to foresee the 
least wishes of the guest, and to remove every difficulty. 



PREFACE vii 

And they exercise their ingenuity in making his stay 
constantly agreeable. I dedicate this book to the de- 
lightful memories of these firm friendships. 

I understood, through my own experience, what my 
colleague and friend Paul Marchal wrote recently, in 
regard to a scientific journey to the United States in 
1913, and in particular regarding a stay at Cornell 
University. "One must have lived for several days," 
he says, "in the atmosphere of this ideal society of the 
arts and sciences, in order fully to enjoy its charm, and 
to understand its harmony, which call to mind the 
picture of the Future City of Henrik Anderson. One 
realizes then to what a profound error European travel- 
ers are the victims, who estimate American life and 
civilization, by judgments formed upon the overwhelm- 
ing impressions which they have felt in the whirl of the 
great business thoroughfares of New York, or from visit- 
ing the famous Stockyards section of Chicago." ^ It is 
in fact a profound impression of idealism that one 
brings back from American university circles. 

In 1916, during the months when the battle of Verdun 
was going on, the meaning of it to a Frenchman was 
singularly reenforced by the warm sympathy which he 
felt in the unanimity of the American intellectual class 
for the cause of France and the heroism of her soldiers. 
He felt himself in the midst of friends more than one 
of whom regretted not yet being an ally. And he car- 
ried away the precious conviction that sincere American 

^ P. Marchal, Les Sciences Biologiques Appliquies a Vagriculture et la 
lutte contre les ennemis des plantes aux Etats-Unis. Paris (Lhomme), 1916, 
p. 252. 



viii PREFACE 

feeling and the American heart were won for his coun- 
try, that the best people in America justly appreciated 
the extent, the purity, and the nobility of the sacrifice 
stoically undergone by the youth of France, for the sal- 
vation of civilization and liberty. 

MAURICE CAULLERY. 
Paris, June 1917. 



PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR TO THE 
TRANSLATION 

At the beginning of this English edition, I wish to 
-^"^ express my hearty thanks to my translators, and 
especially to my good friend, J. H. Woods. I am glad 
that in this form these impressions of my journey will 
reach wider circles of American life. 

But I should like to warn the reader against errone- 
ous conclusions that might be drawn from the book. It 
was written for the French public. One should not be 
surprised to find many details which seem superfluous 
to Americans. And on the other hand, when I spoke of 
France and made comparisons I presupposed among my 
readers a general knowledge of academic and scientific 
life in France and confined myself to allusions. Be- 
cause I wished to stimulate public opinion, I insisted 
almost exclusively on points or reforms that seemed to 
me desirable. The result is that only the defects of the 
French institutions seem to be noted — which exist in 
all countries not excepting the United States — while 
this impression does not appear to be counterbalanced 
by the solid qualities which our higher education does 
actually possess. I should be distressed if the reader, 
heedless of the point of view from which the book was 
written, would regard it as a general criticism of French 
methods. Our traditions often impose upon us heavy 
chains. But they have also fertile educative qualities. 
Those who have a true knowledge of France, who judge 
her without prejudice, can appreciate the clarity, the 



X PREFACE 

solidity, and the refinement in her; and also the high- 
mindedness which is at the foundation of French men- 
tality. To this Professor Barrett Wendell has himself 
borne witness. As to the spirit of discovery, it has shown 
itself, time and again, under conditions the more signifi- 
cant, because the material aids at the disposal of in- 
vestigators left much to be desired. 

M. CAULLERY. 
Paris, December 1920. 



NOTE BY THE TRANSLATORS 

THIS translation was begun in Paris during the war. 
During the disorganization of the system of trans- 
portation the manuscript in its final form disappeared 
somewhere between Havre and New York. The second 
version is accordingly much delayed. But it seems un- 
wise to add to the original any attempt to describe the 
violent oscillations to which American universities have 
been subjected since 1916. The book thus remains un- 
changed, a picture of academic life in the United States 
before the great upheavals of the war, and a pledge of 
comradeship between French and American universities 
in the years to come. Thanks are due to Dr. Raphael 
Demos for assistance on the last pages. 

JAMES HAUGHTON WOODS. 
EMMET RUSSELL. 
May 10, 1920. 



CONTENTS 

Preface v 

Preface by the Author to the Translation . . ix 

Note by the Translators xi 

Table of Contents xiii 

PART I 
THE UNIVERSITIES 

CHAPTER I 

The Principal Universities 3 



Colleges and universities. Recent development. The principal 
universities. Private and state universities. Denominational and 
undenominational universities. 

CHAPTER II 

The Beginnings: From College to University . 16 

The classical college and the Bachelor's degree. Its evolution in the 
nineteenth century. The elective system. The professional schools. 
The introduction of scientific research and the graduate schools. 
German influence. The equilibrium between the college and the 
superadded parts. 

CHAPTER III 

The External Aspect of the University .... 28 

The campus. Harvard: the Yard and the various additions. Co- 
lumbia. Princeton. Berkeley. Cornell. Contrast with French 
universities. 



xiv CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

University Administration. The Government of 
THE University 39 

Harvard, the Corporation and the Board of Overseers. Part played 
by the Alumni. Other universities. Trustees and Regents. The 
President. His powers and position. 

CHAPTER V 

The Professors 50 

General conditions of the career. Moral and material desiderata. 
Excessive burden of teaching. Insufficient participation in the 
management. Precarious guaranties. Advances in the career. 
Salary. Retirement pensions. The Carnegie Foundation. 

CHAPTER VI 

The Students and the Instruction Q5 

The classical college (undergraduate). Admission. Organization of 
studies. Departments. Coordination of coiu-ses. Examinations 
and graduation. College life. Social and collective life. The 
dormitories. Clubs and fraternities. Sports and athletics. Vari- 
ous associations, dramatic societies. The general results of college 
studies. 

CHAPTER VII 

Young Women and the College . 79 

Prevalence of coeducation in the western universities. Its still ex- 
ceptional character in the eastern. Women's colleges. Parallelism 
of studies. Social results. Education and the race problem. 

CHAPTER VIII 

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences ..... 90 

Relations with the college. Development. Degrees. Master of 
Arts. Doctor of Philosophy, The doctorate in the principal uni- 
versities. 



CONTENTS XV 

CHAPTER IX 
The Professional Schools 99 

First group: Theology, Law, Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy. 
Second group : Schools of Pedagogy, Teachers' College at Columbia, 
School of Education at Chicago. Schools of Fine Arts. Architec- 
ture. Schools of Journalism. 

CHAPTER X 
The Professional Schools 112 

Third group : Advanced Schools of Commerce. Harvard Graduate 
School of Business Administration. Chicago, Philadelphia. En- 
gineering Schools: Origin, the Morrill Act, and the Colleges of 
Agriculture and Mechanics. Independent Schools of Technology. 
The various engineering speciaKzations. Practical character of the 
instruction. Schools of Agriculture: R61e of the Morrill Act. Colleges 
of Agriculture. Cornell, California, Illinois Universities, etc. The 
Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges. Veterinary Schools. 

CHAPTER XI 

University Extension and the Summer Session . . 129 

Importance and character of the summer session. The University 
of Chicago quarter system. Extension proper: its beginnings. 
Chautauqua institutes. Extension at Harvard, at Columbia, in the 
state universities (California, Wisconsin). Breadth of university 
extension. 

CHAPTER XII 

General Conclusions on the Organization of the 
Universities. Universities and Society. . . . 136 

Insufficiency of preparation by secondary education. Broad con- 
tact of the university with youth. Evolution of the universities. 
R61e of the state universities. Broadening of the social function of 
the universities. Contact with society. R61e of the alumni. Loy- 
alty and donations. Links with the university: clubs. 



xvi CONTENTS 

PART II 
THE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 

CHAPTER XIII 

Scientific Research in the University .... 15 

Its conditions. Selection of the personnel, and the sciences. Mr. 
J. McK. Cattell's statistics and the distribution of the best Ameri- 
can scientists. The scientific equipment: laboratories and libraries. 
The relation of research and teaching. 

CHAPTER XIV 
Institutes of Research 17 

1. Research in the service of industry. The Mellon Institute at 
Pittsburgh. 2. Wistar Institute at Philadelphia. 3. The biological 
stations: Wood's Hole, Bermuda, San Diego (Scripps Institute 
for biological research). 

CHAPTER XV 

Institutes for Research 18 

The Carnegie Institution at Washington. Its organization. Its 
various departments. The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Re- 
search at New York. 

CHAPTER XVI 

The Natural History Museums and in Particular 
THE American Museum of Natural History of 
New York 19' 

CHAPTER XVII 

The Federal Institutions 20 

Scientific Research at Washington. 



CONTENTS xvii 

CHAPTER XVIII 
Academies and Scientific Societies 219 

CHAPTER XIX 

General Conclusions 235 

Lessons to be drawn for France. Necessity of a Renewal of the 

Agencies and Structures of our Intellectual Life. 

" The world has been remade during the last half -century." 

Appendices 267 



UNIVERSITIES AND SCIENTIFIC LIFE 
IN THE UNITED STATES 

PART I 
THE UNIVERSITIES 



CHAPTER I 

THE PRINCIPAL UNIVERSITIES 

Colleges and universities. Recent development. The principal univer- 
sities. Private and state universities. Denominational and undenomina- 
tional universities. 

IN order to form an idea of scientific life in the United 
States, one should study first the universities. Al- 
though the scientific effort does not all come from them 
and although there is even a tendency to organize out- 
side of them the most powerful institutions and those 
especially destined to promote discoveries, still they re- 
main at the present time the great centres of research, 
and they are the environment in which future workers 
are trained. The productive capacity of the country 
rests therefore upon them; on their good qualities, on 
their defects, depend the fecundity or the deficiencies 
of American science. There is, then, an evident in- 
terest in making a study of them first, and in revealing 
their spirit. 

And also, they are so different from our own, so 
linked, as is natural, with the whole of American society, 
and with the historical conditions of its development, 
that a complete description is necessary in order to 
understand them and to analyze their part in the con- 
temporary scientific movement. 

Like everything in the United States, they have 
passed, in the half-century since the War of Secession, 
through a phase of marvelous prosperity and develop- 
ment. Especially in the last thirty years, this move- 
ment has been accentuated. The proof of it will be 



4 ^UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

found in the figures which I shall have occasion to cite 
in the course of the following chapters. This develop- 
ment has been extraordinarily rapid and consequently 
hasty. It has taken place in perfect freedom, in an in- 
dependent manner in the different parts of the country, 
and not with the uniformity that a central power im- 
presses on the institutions of countries like ours. One 
feels very strongly that all this has by no means ar- 
rived at equilibrium, no more than the cities them- 
selves. 

The American university is very broadly conceived. 
In 1865 Ezra Cornell founded at Ithaca, N. Y., the uni- 
versity which bears his name, and which has become 
one of the most important in the Union. "My inten- 
tion," he said, in a phrase which is now the motto in- 
scribed on the seal of this university, "is to found an 
institution where any man may be instructed in any 
subject." That is a program as immense as it is gen- 
erous. It could be only partially realized, but it ex- 
presses the present idea of the university. It was, 
moreover, in the main that of the French Encyclope- 
dists of the eighteenth century, which our Revolution 
dreamed of realizing without being able to do so. 

In principle, the American university considers that 
nothing is foreign to it, and it offers a diversity of 
teaching and of schools infinitely greater than the tra- 
ditional five Faculties (theology, law, medicine, sci- 
ences, and letters) of the universities of continental 
Europe. 

In fact, it is the juxtaposition of three principal ele- 
ments, of which one, the classical college, is historically 
fundamental. On this college there have come to be 
superimposed, on the one hand, a higher school of dis- 



UNIVERSITIES 5 

interested studies and of scientific research, the Gradu- 
ate School of Arts and Sciences; on the other hand, the 
so-called professional schools, furnishing the necessary 
knowledge for the more or less learned careers, law, 
medicine, the evangelical profession, and likewise for 
all the industrial, commercial or agricultural callings. 
In short, the university aspires to train the leaders in 
all branches of social activity. We see, then, that it has, 
through this program, a very vast contact with the 
whole of the national life. 

The college remains the framework of the university. 
It partakes of the character of our secondary education 
almost as much as of that of our higher instruction; 
it is a hybrid between them. Socially, it is the chief 
element. Its spirit, consequently, is something that 
one must know. Finally, it constitutes in many cases, 
by itself alone, the whole institution. There are now, 
in fact, in the United States, nearly 600 universities or 
colleges,^ forming, from the point of view of their ma- 
terial importance, of the elevation and diversity of 
their studies, a very continuous scale. Quite a number 
of them are, in reality, institutions for no more than 
secondary education. All tend to enlarge and to re- 
semble true universities as much as possible. There is 
a warm competition among all; thus they reflect that 
spirit of "bigness" which impregnates all American 
life. 

These 600 universities and colleges represent a con- 
siderable student population. It numbers at present 

^ The report of the Commissioner of Education gives the statistics of 
596 colleges and universities in 1912-13, and of 567 in 1913-14. Of this 
latter number 93 are state or municipal estabhshments, and 474 are private 
institutions. 



6 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 



between 200,000 and 300,000, and the figures below 
show with what rapidity it has increased in less than 
thirty years. 



Years 


Men 


Women 


Total 


1889-90 


44,926 

75,472 
139,373 


26,874 
38,900 
77,120 


65,800 


1900-01 


114,372 


1913-14 


216,493 







In spite of their extreme inequality, there is never- 
theless a rather uniform general spirit among them, 
which impregnates the youth who frequent them, and 
which in a society so heterogeneous as the present 
United States, is an important factor of unification. 

Of course it would not be possible to study here all 
the American universities, and that would have no 
interest. The largest and the most perfect alone are 
important; for the others try to follow their path, and 
it is in the first alone that one can speak of a true sci- 
entific life. 

As there is no administrative bond between all these 
institutions; and as they live and develop in an en- 
tirely independent manner one from another, they offer 
at first sight a great diversity. In reality the resem- 
blances are much stronger than the differences. Therein 
is a striking example of the influence of the environ- 
ment and of what biologists call convergence. Common 
surrounding conditions have resulted in making them 
uniform, in a large measure.^ 

^ Nevertheless you must not think there is an identity among them. One 
can get a good idea of their individuahty, and at the same time of their gen- 
eral traits, from the very interesting book by E. E. Slosson, Great American 
Universities, New York, McMillan, 1910. 



UNIVERSITIES 7 

First, we must distinguish two great groups, inde- 
pendent universities and colleges, and state universities. 

The independent universities, which are frequently 
designated under the name endowed universities, are 
private institutions, administered entirely by them- 
selves, after the fashion of an industrial or commercial 
society, by means of a council, generally called a board 
of trustees. Their resources come from tuition paid by 
their students, from donations, and from the income of 
their funds previously consolidated, or endowment. 

These private institutions are situated, for the most 
part, in the eastern United States, that is to say, in the 
old part, in the states which constituted the thirteen 
EngHsh colonies of the eighteenth century, and which 
today represent the traditional part of the country, 
that which is the depositary of English civilization, and 
which, until now, has given its impress to the rest of the 
nation. 

The most important are the following: in the first 
place, the oldest. Harvard, at Cambridge, one of the 
cities which surround Boston and form now a unity 
with it. An uninterrupted tradition links the college, 
founded in 1636, with the present university. It is 
Harvard, besides, which has created the whole tradi- 
tion of the American college, and after which the 
younger colleges are modeled. Up to the present it 
has, almost always, been at the head of the intellectual 
movement in America, showing the way in most of the 
transformations which teaching has undergone. This 
role has been assured to it, during the last half-century, 
in large part by the foresight and boldness of the presi- 
dent who directed it from 1869 to 1909, Mr. Charles 
W. Eliot, the greatest American authority on matters 



8 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

of education. Harvard has at present about 5000 
students.^ 

Yale, at New Haven, Conn., the rival of Harvard in 
American university traditions, dates from 1701, and 
has also had a large part in the scientific progress of the 
country. It has had among its professors the geologist 
Dana, the palaeontologist Marsh, the physicist Gibbs. 
The American Journal of Science was founded at 
Yale in 1818. Today Yale numbers more than 3000 
students. 

Three other of the most important universities were 
founded in the eighteenth century; that of Pennsyl- 
vania, in 1740, at Philadelphia; Princeton, in 1751; and 
Columbia (under the name of King's College) at New 
York, in 1754. 

The University of Pennsylvania has grown parallel 
with the city of Philadelphia and was one of the first 
to diversify itself by the addition of special schools. It 
has today over 5000 students. 

Princeton University, situated in the city of that 
name, in the state of New Jersey, is that one of the 
large universities which has departed least from the 
older form of the college; hence its relatively small 
number of students, about 1500. 

Columbia has recently taken, with New York, a 
prodigiously rapid spurt, materially and scientifically. 
It remained a relatively unimportant college until 
about thirty years ago, when it took the name of uni- 
versity, in 1891. Since then it has merged with several 
special institutions of New York, has become diversi- 
fied in the extreme, and is today, with its 6000 students, 

1 This figure, like the following ones, does not include the summer schools, 
as in the table on page 129. 



UNIVERSITIES 9 

its enormous resources/ the strength of its professorial 
staff, and the level of its studies, one of the most power- 
ful universities of the world. 

Several other large private universities, in contrast 
with the preceding, are of recent creation. 

Johns Hopkins, founded in 1875, at Baltimore, thanks 
to a legacy of the benefactor whose name it bears — a 
bequest whose amount, $3,500,000, seemed enormous 
at the time — has played a chief role in American higher 
education, although materially it is rather small. It 
was planned in a radically different fashion from the 
ordinary college, as an establishment for true higher 
learning, for its role was to encourage and organize 
original scientific research. And it has filled this part 
in a brilliant manner, and has also contributed above 
all to the elevation of medical instruction. But from 
having withdrawn itself from the usual conditions, 
Johns Hopkins has been deprived of the great afflux of 
receipts and gifts which goes to the other universities, 
and it has fallen now into rather serious financial dif- 
ficulties. One may see, moreover, that in the table 
on p. 147, the figures relating to it are small. Today 
it has scarcely a thousand students. Its capital is 
$6,265,000. 

^ These are the consolidated interest bearing funds of the different 
universities: 

Harvard $22,000,000 

Yale 16,380,000 

Pennsylvania 6,000,000 

Princeton 6,000,000 

Columbia 33,000,000 

These figures, taken from the report of the Commissioner of Education 
for 1913-14, do not include the value of lands, buildings or equipment, but 
only the liquidated funds or endowment. 



10 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

Cornell University, at Ithaca, N. Y., dates from 1865. 
Founded by Ezra Cornell, and admirably situated on a 
wooded plateau where it covers no less than twelve 
hundred acres, it has become one of the most interest- 
ing universities, in particular from the point of view of 
biological sciences, and of their application to agricul- 
ture. It numbers more than 5000 students, and its 
consolidated funds are more than $14,000,000. 

The University of Chicago, and Leland Stanford Jr. 
University at Palo Alto, California, represent the type 
of independent universities in the West. The Univer- 
sity of Chicago is today of the very first rank, in numbers 
(more than 6,000), in its ample equipment and labora- 
tories, in the high character of its advanced instruc- 
tion, in the composition of its faculty, and in resources 
(its productive capital is over $18,000,000). It has 
been built chiefly from gifts of Mr. J. D. Hockefeller, 
which have amounted to $25,000,000. 

Leland Stanford, which bears the name of its founder, 
from whom it has received $30,000,000, has been 
equipped in magnificent fashion. It suffered much 
from the great earthquake of 1906, which partly 
destroyed it. 

It would be proper to mention still other private uni- 
versities, besides the preceding. I will limit myself to 
naming one, very small in number of students, intended 
to be an institution where research in pure science was 
to be done by men who should be regarded as "fel- 
lows" rather than as students. It is Clark University, 
founded in 1887, at Worcester, Mass. It has, like Johns 
Hopkins, passed through difficulties which have not yet 
ended. 



UNIVERSITIES 11 

The state universities are differing from the preced- 
ing in origin, and in many respects, in spirit. They 
draw their resources, not from individuals, but from the 
state. Each western state has, in a general way, its 
university, which it supports in a very liberal fashion, 
through its general budget. More than eleven of these 
universities have subsidies of more, and often much 
more, than one million dollars. 

The origin of most of them goes back to the Morrill 
Act, passed by Congress in 1862, which gave to the 
several states considerable areas of public lands, the 
income, or the proceeds from the sale of which must 
be devoted to education, principally to the teaching of 
agriculture and the mechanic arts. 

Thus arose the Agricultural and Mechanical Col- 
leges, most of which, by expanding, have become the 
present state universities. Some have absorbed an al- 
ready existing college; that was the case in California; 
others have been incorporated into a university properly 
so-called. That is the case of Cornell University, in the 
state of New York, which has, consequently, an inter- 
mediate character between private and state universities. 
Some, in the East, have remained independent, under 
their original name, like the Massachusetts Agricultural 
College, at Amherst, which has remained specially bio- 
logical and agricultural. 

Through their origin, the state universities have had 
at the beginning some very utilitarian tendencies. 
They have, before all else, striven for practical applica- 
tion and teaching. Real culture has only little by little 
made a place for itself in them, and is still often rather 
cramped, and much of the teaching smacks of the soil. 



12 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

Being sustained by the state, they are more demo- 
cratic in spirit, and more open to all classes, by the 
mere fact that their teaching is free, at least for citi- 
zens of the state in which each of them is established. 
Their student population is large, chiefly because they 
are less exacting as to the knowledge required of their 
pupils at entrance. But as they grow larger, they tend 
to approach the private universities of the East in 
classic tradition, and at the same to rise toward pure 
scientific research. 

Here are a few summary remarks about the most 
important: The oldest, that of Virginia, founded in 1819 
by Jefferson, with views which were far in advance of 
the time, has been retarded in its development, like all 
the South. 

The University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, dates 
from 1841. It is one of those that have attained the 
highest level and the most considerable development. 
It has nearly 6400 students. 

The University of Wisconsin, at Madison, was 
founded in 1849. It has today 5000 students. It is in 
a period of rapid development and has shown a remark- 
able audacity in the breadth of its program, especially 
in respect of popular instruction. 

The University of California, magnificently situated 
at Berkeley, on the slopes which border, on the east, 
San Francisco Bay, facing the Golden Gate, has become 
one of the largest in numbers (more than 6000 students), 
and one of the most interesting through its teaching and 
its publications. 

The University of Illinois, at Urbana, has an almost 
equal importance (5000 to 6000 students — it had but 
500 in 1890), and has laboratories very broadly planned. 



UNIVERSITIES 13 

The University of Minnesota, at Minneapolis, has 
about 4500 students. ^ 

These are the principal state universities, and one 
may see how ample their resources are. I should men- 
tion, besides them, those of Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, and 
others. 

There is without question a group rivalry between 
private and state universities. Under the similar con- 
ditions of the environment, they are coming to a very 
general resemblance, but their tendencies are never- 
theless divergent. The private universities of the East 
have hitherto represented real culture in an incontest- 
able fashion, and have shown the way. The state 
universities, by their origin and tendencies, have ac- 
celerated the incorporation beside classical subjects, 
and the development in advanced instruction, of the 
applied sciences much needed in modern society. 

The distinction between state and private univer- 
sities is the most important, and is the one which I wish 
to point out here. I shall note, however, in a very brief 
way, that among the private establishments, some are 
like the state universities, without allegiance to a par- 
ticular sect — undenominational, as they are called — 
while the others are under the control of the church 
which has founded them. All the large universities be- 
long to the first category. In the second, a special 
group is constituted by Catholic establishments, and in 

^ Here is the summarized table of the subsidies which these universities 
have received from their respective states, in 1913-14. 

For New Equipment For Current Expense 

California $350,000 $1,220,000 

Illinois 660,000 1,636,000 

Michigan 350,000 1,038,000 

Minnesota 941,000 1,420,000 

Wisconsin 343,000 1,811,000 



14 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

particular the colleges of the Jesuit order. These in- 
stitutions have a history of their own, quite independent 
of the evolution of American universities properly so- 
called, and I shall leave them completely aside. 

The sectarian origin of many colleges, and the caprice 
of private foundations, explain how the same city may 
have several universities, a fact which does not fail to 
surprise us at first. To cite but a few examples, Wash- 
ington has no less than four — George Washington 
University, the Catholic University of America, George- 
town University, likewise Catholic, and Howard Uni- 
versity for negroes ; and three more colleges. New York, 
besides Columbia, possesses another large and impor- 
tant institution. New York University, large municipal 
colleges (City College for men and Hunter College for 
Women), a Catholic university (Fordham), without 
counting the colleges of Brooklyn and the school of 
medicine of Cornell University. Philadelphia has like- 
wise, besides the University of Pennsylvania, several 
colleges, one being Catholic and another Jewish. 
Chicago, besides the university of that name, is the 
seat of the Faculties of medicine of Illinois and North- 
western Universities, of an important technological 
school (Armour Institute), and finally of two Catholic 
universities. Boston, besides Harvard across the river, 
has Boston University, which is sectarian, and the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the greatest 
engineering school of the United States. Tufts College 
and Wellesley College are in its immediate neighbor- 
hood. 

From the point of view which occupies us here, and 
outside of two or three particular cases, the establish- 
ments attached to a particular sect have no real im- 



UNIVERSITIES 15 

portance, and it will suffice us to consider hereafter the 
universities on which I have commented in this first 
chapter. 1 We are now going to study their life under its 
different aspects. 

^ I shall only be concerned with the universities of the United States. 
Nevertheless I shall indicate that the Canadian universities are developing 
in a quite parallel fashion, and have, moreover, very close relations with 
those of the Union. The chief are McGill University at Montreal and the 
University of Toronto. 



CHAPTER II 

THE BEGINNINGS: FROM COLLEGE TO UNIVERSITY 

The classical college and the Bachelor's degree. Its evolution in the nine- 
teenth century. The elective system. The professional schools. The intro- 
duction of scientific research and the graduate schools. German influence. 
The equilibrium between the college and the superadded parts. 

ALTHOUGH America is the New World, the uni- 
^ versities as we see them today, are the resultants 
of very ancient traditions and customs. 

All that has been introduced recently has been set 
into the original framework, and adapted to the past. 
In France it would not have been done so. In a strongly 
centralized and bureaucratic country like ours, univer- 
sity institutions were created from almost nothing at 
all by Napoleon. But this method of his is not the most 
favorable for imparting to the universities real vitality. 
Yet a progressive evolution is a fatal necessity, in case 
of private institutions, like the American universities 
of the East, the first in time and the models for the 
others. They reflect a society and its history, and are 
a heritage from English life. 

Thus in order to understand them, we must first re- 
call their origin. As has already been said, the uni- 
versity is a metamorphosis of the college, or rather an 
epigenesis of it. The college still subsists, it is the axis 
about which the other parts have been articulated; 
equilibrium is not yet completely established between 
them and it. It is therefore the story of the college 
which must first be given. 

16 



UNIVERSITIES 17 

It goes back to the first years of the New England 
colonies. In 1620 the Mayflower brought the Pilgrims 
to the Massachusetts coast. Sixteen years later, in the 
neighborhood of the city which is now Boston, within 
the town which was beginning to rise on the left bank 
of the Charles River, they created a college, like those 
of the mother country. And as many of the colonists 
came from Cambridge, they gave the same name to the 
new town where they placed their establishment. There- 
fore it is indeed the English college of Cambridge and 
Oxford which is the prototype of the American College. 
Harvard took the name of the first of its benefactors, 
the Reverend John Harvard, who died in 1637, leaving 
his library and a sum of £600, the first contribution 
to its funds. 

It was only in 1701 that the second college of the 
American colonies was founded, Yale, in Connecticut, 
at New Haven. Princeton, Columbia, and Pennsylvania 
date from the middle of the eighteenth century. There 
were eleven colleges at the time of the War of Inde- 
pendence, eleven others were founded between that 
event and 1800, 33 from 1800 to 1830, 180 from 1830 to 
1865, and 236 from 1865 to 1900. 

These eastern colleges, today of an entirely private 
character, were in origin products of the community. 
Harvard was created by the Massachusetts General 
Court; it was governed by a committee comprising at 
first the governor and lieutenant governor of the com- 
monwealth, and clergymen of the towns near Boston. 
This committee has been subdivided into two since 
1650, one composed of seven persons, including the 
president and the treasurer of the college, which has 
been perpetuated down to our time, under the name of 



18 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

the Corporation (or the President and Fellows of Har- 
vard College), and it has retained all the powers of ini- 
tiative, of executive, and of finance. The other has 
become an advisory council, which is today the Board 
of Overseers. This duality at Harvard is moreover a 
special exception. The true and more general evolu- 
tion has consisted in the gradual elimination from these 
councils of the representatives of the government who 
figured in them ex officio. 

From the beginning, following the English custom, 
the colleges could acquire property, and they became 
more and more independent in the management of it. 
At their distant origins, the first universities, though 
private today, were thus in a certain measure state 
institutions. 

The essential function of these colleges was, and 
remained until after the opening of the nineteenth 
century, the intellectual training of clergymen. The 
members of their councils were for a long time almost 
exclusively ofiicial personages and ministers of religion. 
The great majority of their students went into the 
Church; 75 per cent at Yale for example (the propor- 
tion today is 3 to 4 per cent). These colleges long 
remained of very modest dimensions. About 1830 Har- 
vard numbered 10 professors and about 200 students. 
Columbia had 6 professors and 125 students. That also 
explains why the majority of these institutions, chiefly 
theological in design, were founded by or originated 
from churches. The clergymen were moreover, with 
the lawyers and to some extent the physicians, the 
only classes in American society of that time who pos- 
sessed anything like a classical education. 



UNIVERSITIES 19 

College teaching was conceived with a view to these 
needs. The pupils lived there together, as at Oxford 
and Cambridge. Their studies were all of the same 
character and for the most part classical. They dealt 
with English and the ancient languages (Greek, Latin, 
Hebrew) with a little mathematics. They were little 
by little stereotyped into an unchangeable program 
which was called the curriculum. They were spread 
over four years, designated by the traditional names 
of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. At the end 
of four years the student left college with the diploma 
or degree of Bachelor of Arts, A.B. After another year s 
study they obtained the A.M. That was the summum 
of liberal education in America until a half-century ago. 
The subjects of the curriculum had acquired a sort of 
nobility in contrast with all others. 

Only in the nineteenth century did the development 
of industry lead gradually to the creation of special 
schools, preparatory to the professions. Thus were 
organized one by one, at Harvard, at Philadelphia, and 
at New York, schools of medicine, of law, and of theol- 
ogy; but they remained a long time rudimentary. 

Schools of applied sciences were also created. About 
the middle of the nineteenth century. Harvard and 
Yale organized, to this end, in close connection with 
the college, yet distinct from it, the former the Lawrence 
Scientific School, the latter the Sheffield Scientific 
School, where studies lead to the degree of Bachelor of 
Science, S.B. For a long time — even today — this de- 
gree had not the prestige of the A.B. 

As has already been said, it was because the colleges 
refused to give to applied scientific studies a place which 



20 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

had become necessary, that Congress determined to 
found the colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts.^ 
It was likewise in response to this same need that a 
series of engineering schools was created, independent 
of the colleges; and in particular, in 1865, at Boston, 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which grew 
rapidly. 

However, as scientific instruction was making its way 
in the college itself, the old curriculum broke down, 
studies were diversified, and the elective system was 
substituted for the preceding uniformity. Mr. Charles 
W. Eliot at Harvard, contributed much to this new 
development. The colleges began to organize very 
varied courses of instruction. Each student chooses 
from them, according to his tastes and his needs, a 
given number of courses, extending over four years, and 
the whole of which formed the minimum required for 
the Bachelor's degree. This system has certainly been 
carried to excess. The colleges, in friendly emulation, 
compete in offering programs as broad and varied as 
possible, but without much coordination, and the stu- 
dents' choice was often made rather with a view to the 
least effort than to the coherence and strength of their 
course. 

Today, at least in the good universities, there is a 
check on this freedom of choice. It is regulated. There 
are obligatory fundamental studies, especially in the 
first years of college. But the possibilities of choice re- 
main very vast; the more so because, even in secondary 
education, at the high school, they are rather numerous. 

Parallel to the diversification of college studies, 
schools furnishing the knowledge necessary for definite 

1 See eh. x, p. 116. 



UNIVERSITIES 21 

professions grew up beside the college. The teaching in 
them is no longer entirely disinterested and purely 
cultural, as in the classical college. These schools are 
generally called professional schools or colleges. They 
are schools of theology, law, medicine, colleges of en- 
gineering, agriculture, or commerce. The unity of the 
college has been definitively broken by them; and a 
new problem has arisen : that of the relations between 
them and it. This evolution has been accomplished, in 
unequal degrees in different cases, and is today one of 
the chief elements of diversification in the universities. 
Princeton, for example, has no professional schools. 
Columbia has a very numerous series of them, among 
which appears even a school of journalism. We shall 
return to each class with some detail. 

At the same time that the preceding transformation 
was being accomplished, an addition of a different order 
was being made to the old college — that of the Grad- 
uate Schools, and more particularly of the Graduate 
School of Arts and Sciences. The spirit of this addition 
was the introduction of original scientific research into 
the normal framework of the university. 

Research had no place in the older college for the 
students, nor even for the professors. The impulse 
given by a few men, in the first rank of whom must be 
mentioned Louis Agassiz and Asa Gray, at Harvard, 
was the point of departure of this new era. Agassiz, 
who had been given a professorship, thanks to the or- 
ganization of the Lawrence Scientific School, had 
founded in 1860, at Harvard, the Museum of Compara- 
tive Zoology, and had actively developed it through his 
voyages of exploration. He had grouped around him 



22 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

quite a nucleus of young men, to whom he had given 
the taste for original research. The palaeontologists 
likewise, a little later. Marsh at Yale, Cope at Phila- 
delphia, as well as J. Leidy, attracted pupils. But 
scientific resources in America were insufficient for the 
pioneers in almost all branches of science, and the young 
men came to Europe for their apprenticeship. 

England, in spite of the community of language, did 
not, at the time, offer them favorable scientific in- 
stitutions. Cambridge and Oxford still remained con- 
fined to classical studies and to their old traditions. In 
France the Faculties were in the rudimentary state to 
which Napoleon I had reduced them. The great scien- 
tific men, like Pasteur, Claude Bernard, Sainte-Claire 
Deville, did not have laboratories in which they could 
have numerous collaborators. They understood the 
necessity for them, and asked for them insistently,^ but 
without success, invoking, since 1867, in terms which 
have lost nothing of their worth, the example of 
Germany. 

Youthful Americans were naturally drawn to Ger- 
many, because they found there all the necessary 
conditions for their apprenticeship, no examinations 
constituting, as with us, too numerous barriers; the 
possibility of winning easily the degree of Doctor of 
Philosophy, which they carried back with them as a 
palpable sanction of their work abroad; finally, well- 
furnished laboratories and seminars, in which the 
spirit of research was general, and the professors were 
devoted to their pupils. Already, about 1825, the Liebig 

^ See the "Report on Physiology" made by Claude Bernard for the 
Exposition of 1867, and Pasteur's requests to Napoleon III, in Vallery Radot, 
La Vie de Pasteur, pp. 204-206. 



UNIVERSITIES 23 

laboratory had begun to attract foreigners. We cannot 
too much regret that at the moment when Prussia, in 
1811, founded the University of BerHn, and directed it 
toward original research. Napoleon I conceived the 
university faculties as mere bureaus for state diplomas. 
In the relations between America and Germany, the 
universities have been a factor of the first order. Ger- 
many has drawn from them not only important moral 
support, through the influence which she has temporar- 
ily exercised in a profound fashion on American men- 
tality, but also, considerable material profit. It would 
be puerile to try to deny that she owes this result to the 
development of her laboratories and to the systematic 
direction of her universities toward original research. 

During more than forty years, a good part of the 
most intellectual American youths, those who hoped to 
fill the chairs of new or enlarged universities, and who 
were in their time to shape the following generations, 
have gone to finish their education, and above all to 
begin research, in Germany. They received a profound 
impress there. At the beginning of the twentieth cen- 
tury, the vision of things scientific, in America, was 
through German ideas. Charles S. Minot, professor of 
embryology at the Harvard Medical School, expressed 
this fact in a very categorical manner, speaking of him- 
self at the beginning of the opening lecture of the course 
he gave as Exchange Professor at the University of 
Berlin, in 1912. "Forty years ago," he said, "a young 
American, twenty years of age, decided to devote him- 
self to science. He soon recognized that a young natu- 
ralist was far from finding the necessary facilities and 
support in America at that time. Therefore he resolved 
to come to Europe. He found in Germany teachers 



24 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

fired with sacred zeal, and laboratories, and so it hap- 
pened that, through his German scientific education, 
he became an intellectual subject of Germany'' ^ In the 
American universities there is scarcely a professor be- 
longing to approximately the same or the following 
generation, who has not worked in the German labora- 
tories and who has not been profoundly influenced by 
the idea of the scientific supremacy of Germany. This 
has become a truism which is found endlessly expressed 
in the most diverse forms, in speeches, toasts, and 
otherwise. 

We must be frank to recognize that this influence 
exercised by Germany, however excessive it may be, 
rested on solid bases. The Americans have learned much 
from Germany; they could bring back, for many sci- 
ences, models which they only had to adapt to their 
needs. That is past now. The apogee of German 
scientific influence had already passed before the war. 
The young American no longer needed, in general, to 
go to Europe to study. He had laboratories, libraries 
and guides at home. But the habit begun, the tradition 
spread, made many others take the same road as their 
elder brothers. The vitahty of the German laboratories 
was thus assured for a notable part, by the foreign 
patronage which attended them, in particular by that 
of the Americans. Seeing Germany especially through 
science, the Americans had acquired tenacious illusions 
concerning its general mentality, which the war has 
dissipated, and which had completely disappeared be- 
fore the United States came to direct intervention. 
The era of regular migrations to Berlin, Leipzig, or 
Heidelberg is doubtless closed for a long time. 

^ Science, December 6, 1912. 



UNIVERSITIES 25 

College remained the necessary foundation for stu- 
dents who wished to undertake really higher studies 
and research. The school of advanced studies was, then, 
purely and simply added; the students were men who 
had previously taken the Bachelor's degree, that is to 
say, graduates; and it received the name of the Grad- 
uate School of Arts and Sciences. It covers the field of 
our Faculties ^ of Letters and of Sciences, and extends 
the college in all its branches. 

But not every college has such a school. It exists in 
scarcely more than thirty universities. It is best rep- 
resented in those I mentioned in the preceding chapter. 

The foregoing evolution, from college to university, 
has broken the unity of the former; and the relations 
of the parts, in the new organism, have not yet arrived 
at the state of equilibrium. There is a college crisis, 
which we see frequently denounced by the partisans of 
the tradition. 

The classical college, in fact, with its four years of 
disinterested culture, preparing directly for no career, 
and holding the student till he is twenty-two, is too long 
a stage if one is to enter on professional studies after- 
ward. Moreover, the professional schools which require 
a Bachelor's degree for entrance are exceptions, and in- 
deed recent exceptions, even in such a case as that of 
medicine, where the Bachelor's degree is theoretically 
required. There again Harvard and Johns Hopkins 
have shown the way. It was to avoid the roundabout 
way through college that special engineering schools, 

^ I should remark here once for all, that the word "Faculty" is not ab- 
solutely equivalent to ours. It designates, in fact, ahnost exclusively the 
body of professors. The institution is called a "School," e.g., school of 
medicine, school of law. In a college, the Faculty is the whole body of the 
instructors. 



26 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

such for example as the Institute of Technology at 
Boston, were created — which takes its students at 
eighteen, exacting less knowledge than for entrance to 
Harvard, and brings them to their goal in four years. 
If the college kept rigorously its traditional four years, 
it would be deserted by many. It must therefore 
shorten its studies and combine them with professional 
courses. It must bring about a more complete inter- 
penetration of college and professional schools. This is 
the change which is being accomplished more and more, 
still meeting with a certain resistance. 

The shortening of the college course can scarcely re- 
sult otherwise than to the detriment of the last two 
years. But, its defenders say very justly, those are the 
most essential for the training of the mind. The true 
solution of the problem would lie in an improvement of 
secondary education, which should bring back to the 
high school the present first two years of college, and 
would bring the student entering the university at 
eighteen to the state of maturity and knowledge which 
he does not reach today before twenty, when he becomes 
a junior. This view has been maintained by many uni- 
versity presidents and professors. 

American secondary education is very short. It does 
not begin till fourteen, and covers only four years. Be- 
sides, the studies are less tyrannical than in France or 
Germany. The adolescent has much more leisure, 
which he can spend in games and sports. This pro- 
duces a much more vigorous youth. But from the intel- 
lectual point of view, there is an undeniable delay, and 
it surely seems that a better ordering of primary and 
secondary studies would resolve the difficulty at least 
in part. 



UNIVERSITIES 27 

The American university, in a general way, is still 
in a period of transition and of formation. The past 
persists, and remains its solid foundation; all that has 
been added to it and forms the superstructure, is hetero- 
geneous, and the relations of the parts among them- 
selves and with the whole have not yet assumed a 
character of definitive stability. The working out of 
this, is one of the chief differences between the several 
universities. In each it has resulted from particular 
circumstances and has taken place in a more or less 
special manner. 



CHAPTER III 

THE EXTERNAL ASPECT OF THE UNIVERSITY 

The campus. Harvard, the Yard and the various additions. Columbia. 
Princeton. Berkeley. Cornell. Contrast with the French universities. 

AFTER having looked at American universities and 
^ the prominent features of their historical develop- 
ment, in a general and abstract way, let us now ap- 
proach them in their concrete reality, as they appear 
to us in their location and external appearance. A few 
examples will be the best means of giving an idea of 
them. 

Let us go first to Harvard. Cambridge had remained 
until a short time ago, a peaceful town, with frame 
houses, each with its yard, in the midst of century-old 
trees. The yards are disappearing, and tall stone apart- 
ment houses, built close to one another, are little by 
little replacing the frame dwellings. The Gipsy Moth, 
imported from Europe — without the parasites which 
there limit its multiplication, having crossed to America 
at the same time — has propagated itself in a disastrous 
manner in New England, destroying the woods, and in 
particular killing many fine trees in Cambridge. Har- 
vard today is no longer in a sylvan site. Little by little it 
has been surrounded by the less happy setting of the city. 

The old Harvard of the College — which is generally 
called the campus in American universities, but which 
is usually designated here by the English equivalent, 
yard — is a large quadrilateral partly surrounded by 
walls and tall iron fences, partly by a plain wooden 



UNIVERSITIES 29 

fence, which allows glimpses of its trees, over which 
many gray squirrels scamper, and of its lawns, in the 
midst of which rise the buildings or halls of the univer- 
sity. The latter are of brick, severe in aspect, the oldest 
without ornament, following the Puritan tradition; the 
old dormitories where the students live, the chapel, the 
administration building (University Hall); the Presi- 
dent's house, rebuilt but a few years ago by the present 
President, Mr. A. L. Lowell; a group of buildings hous- 
ing various departments of the university. Sever Hall, 
Emerson Hall, the school of architecture; finally, the 
monumental Widener Memorial Library, dedicated in 
June 1915. It is a city, with open spaces and well- 
ordered shade, but in which for a long time there has 
been no room for new buildings. 

Thus, many years ago. Harvard began to expand. 
Memorial Hall, facing the Yard, a large building sur- 
mounted by a tower, was erected in memory of the 
Harvard men who fell on the battlefields of the Civil 
War. It was not thought that life should be excluded 
from this memorial monument. One of the wings is the 
large dining hall of the university, where one thousand 
students may dine together; the other is arranged as 
a theatre (Sanders Theatre), in which until recently the 
presentation of diplomas at the end of the year took 
place, and where from time to time dramatic perform- 
ances are given. I saw there one of the farewell perform- 
ances of a great English actor. Sir Forbes Robertson, 
playing Hamlet, in the simple setting of the time of 
Shakespeare. On such an occasion, the university re- 
ceives its guests. 

Beyond, in the still open part of the city, are dis- 
persed along shady avenues a number of university 



30 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

buildings; laboratories, the Museum of Comparative 
Zoology (Agassiz Museum), and Museum of Ethnog- 
raphy (Peabody Museum), Law School, Divinity 
School; in another direction on the banks of the Charles 
River, the vast new dormitories which Harvard has just 
built in order to keep its freshmen together, and cement 
their comradeship by life in common, from the time of 
their entrance into the university. 

One cannot help regretting that instead of develop- 
ing somewhat by chance, outside of the Yard, Harvard 
could not have reserved for itself, when there was yet 
time, all the land which separated it from the river, 
and into which the city has now extended its narrow 
and ugly streets. 

On the other side of Charles River, facing the fresh- 
man dormitories, a wide vacant space. Soldiers Field, 
is used for the manoeuvres of the Harvard regiment — 
they have been active for two years — and, on one side 
of it is the Stadium, an open air amphitheatre, on the 
tiers of which more than 25,000 spectators may be 
seated to view the games. On the banks of the Charles 
the boathouses complete this group devoted to physi- 
cal exercise, which is so important in all the American 
universities. 

But what remains crowded around the primitive 
nucleus is still only a fraction of Harvard. At a little 
distance in Cambridge are the buildings and dormi- 
tories of Radcliffe College, for women, distinct from 
Harvard, but affiliated with it. Crossing the Common, 
characteristic of all the old Puritan towns of New Eng- 
land, we reach the Observatory and the Botanical 
Gardens, with the building which shelters the Gray 
Herbarium, founded by Asa Gray. 



UNIVERSITIES 31 

In Boston, Harvard has its magnificent Medical 
School, at Longwood, in the hospital section. Rebuilt 
in 1907, it consists of ^ve large marble buildings form- 
ing three sides of a rectangular court. 

Finally, beyond Boston, at Forest Hills, Harvard has 
other dependencies; Bussey Institution, at first a 
school of agriculture, is today an institute of applied 
biology in which experimental heredity especially is 
studied. 

Adjoining is the Arnold Arboretum, a magnificent 
park of 125 acres. Further away at Petersham, Har- 
vard owns a forest of 1000 acres, which is a practical 
school of forestry. Besides these annexes in the neigh- 
borhood of Boston, there are more distant ramifica- 
tions: a camp for students of mining engineering in 
Vermont, another camp, covering nearly 750 acres, in 
New Hampshire, where civil engineers serve their ap- 
prenticeship in the study of topography and in laying 
out railway lines; finally a biological station in the 
Bermudas. 

Therefore Harvard is not a monumental but unex- 
panding building, confined in the unchangeable sur- 
roundings of a city. It failed, nevertheless, to grow in 
time to remain entirely concentrated. 

Columbia College, stifled in old New York, emigrated 
exactly twenty years ago, upon becoming a university, 
to Morningside Heights, and is once more already shut 
in within the city. Built almost at one time, and after 
a unified plan, it has buildings of homogeneous style 
and some open spaces for building still remain. But 
when its prodigiously rapid growth is considered, it 
seems that it will soon be in straits again, and that it 



32 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

will perhaps think of finding a new location. Never- 
theless it is at the time adapted as completely as pos- 
sible to the life of a university in a great city. Each class 
of services has its own building and its separate en- 
trance. The museum of archaeology is not near the 
chemical laboratory as at the Sorbonne. At the same 
time it has the benefits of concentration. One of its 
buildings, very suggestive in its present condition, has 
the form of a mighty semicircle, which ends abruptly at 
the second story, with a fiat roof. This will become the 
foundation of a great amphitheatre, when the generosity 
of a donor permits the complete execution of the plan. 
And this visibly unfinished building seems to call for 
the donation. Upon entering it, you find in the base- 
ment a large pool where, at all seasons, the boys come 
to swim, and above which is a vast gymnasium. The 
main floor is a power-house, a central plant, which dis- 
tributes heat, cold, compressed air and electricity to 
all parts of the university. All that, managed by expert 
engineers, assures to all departments the most modern 
services, while avoiding expensive duplications.^ 

At Chicago, that immense city, the university, 
founded in 1890, is also quite agglomerated, and does 
not yet lack room. It extends along a broad avenue, 
the Midway Plaisance, which connects two large parks. 
In 1914 it covered 90 acres and consisted of about 50 
buildings, in an English Gothic style, very sumptuous 
as well as homogeneous, which recalls both Oxford and 
Cambridge. It has secured the ownership of the land in its 

1 At the Sorbonne, built at the same time as Columbia, the Faculty of 
Sciences alone has seventeen heating plants, but has no energy producing 
station. 



UNIVERSITIES 33 

neighborliood, bordering the avenue, and it can extend 
at its pleasure in the future. The University of Chicago 
is the one which in exterior has perhaps the best ap- 
pearance and the amplest room, as an urban university. 

The universities which have still remained outside 
the great cities, in the open country or in small towns, 
are more charming. 

Such is Princeton, in New Jersey, scarcely two hours 
from New York. The town has only a few thousand 
inhabitants; it blends with the country in all directions, 
and seems to be but the necessary complement of the 
university. Along broad streets, lined with large trees, 
or widely and irregularly spaced on vast lawns, the 
sixty-five university buildings, laboratories, halls, and 
dormitories, seem scattered over a great park. Some 
date from the eighteenth century, and were witnesses or 
the seat of important events in the War of Independ- 
ence. There was a battle at Princeton, and in one of the 
university halls, George Washington received the first 
ambassador accredited to the United States. 

Princeton leaves with the foreigner passing through, 
above all an impression of luxury. Its Graduates' Col- 
lege, in the style of the great English colleges of Oxford 
and Cambridge, is particularly sumptuous. The stu- 
dents have numerous and elegant clubs. Out of the 
little stream an elongated lake has been made, Carnegie 
Lake, in order to allow canoeing and regattas. This 
seems to the traveler a Thelema's abbey for youth, and 
this impression cannot be entirely false, for Mr. Wood- 
row Wilson, who was its president before he entered the 
White House, made the following remarks, in a report 
which roused storms of protest. "We realized," he says, 



34 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

"that, for all its subtle charm and beguiling air of 
academic, Princeton, so far as her undergraduates were 
concerned, had come to be merely a delightful place of 
residence, where young men, for the most part happily 
occupied by other things, were made to perform certain 
academic tasks; that, although we demanded at times 
a certain part of the attention of our pupils for intel- 
lectual things, their life and consciousness were for the 
rest wholly unacademic and detached from the interests 
which in theory were the all-important interests of the 
place. For a great majority of them, residence here meant 
a happy life of comradeship and sport interrupted by the 
grind of perfunctory 'lessons' and examinations, to which 
they attended rather because of the fear of being cut off 
from this life than because they were seriously engaged in 
getting training which would fit their faculties and their 
spirits for the tasks of the world which they knew they 
must face after their happy freedom was over.''^ 

I hasten to say that Princeton otherwise gives un- 
deniable proof of being an important scientific centre, 
where investigators must enjoy a particularly calm and 
agreeable life. Works of the first order have come from 
its biological laboratories, and in particular. Professor 
W. B. Scott, who is one of the masters of the palaeon- 
tology of Mammals, has built up there, with materials 
discovered, worked up, and studied by him and his 
pupils, one of the finest and most valuable museums for 
this special branch, whose bearing on the study of the 
problem of evolution is considerable. 

Properly speaking, the University of California is no 
longer situated in the country. The city of Berkeley is 

* Prmceton Alumni Weekly, 1907, Quoted from Slosson, op. a<., pp. 79-80. 



UNIVERSITIES 35 

developing rapidly around it, but is spread out broadly 
in the midst of gardens. The university campus occu- 
pies a delightful site, on the slope of the hills, bathed by 
San Francisco Bay, exactly facing the Golden Gate, 
where, every evening, the setting sun plunges into the 
Pacific, framed by the silhouette of the mountains and 
of the great port. This campus is a vast park, in which 
the eucalyptus grow beside palms and numerous cen- 
tury-old live oaks with robust gnarled branches. The 
university of Berkeley, founded in 1868 by the union of 
a private college and a creation of the state of California, 
in execution of the Morrill Act, has had the happy for- 
tune to have at its disposal an immense space. Its first 
laboratories were built of wood and are still standing, 
but as temporary buildings. A competition among 
architects was held, a few years ago, in which our com- 
patriot, M. Benard, was the winner, to plan the whole 
of the permanent buildings, and little by little the latter 
is going up, all covered with white marble. Already the 
administration building, California Hall, the college of 
agriculture, that of mines, and the library, have been 
finished, and others were in construction in 1916. In 
the centre, a replica of the Campanile of Venice has been 
erected, and on one of the slopes of the park, a Greek 
theatre, exactly reproduced, in which, thanks to the 
California climate, performances can be given in the 
open air before thousands of spectators. So the univer- 
sity city rises, little by little, without destroying nature. 
Yet the vast campus at Berkeley only encloses a part 
of the university, the classical college, that of engineer- 
ing and that of agriculture, as well as the scientific lab- 
oratories. In San Francisco, on the other side of the 
bay, which the ferries cross in twenty minutes, are the 



36 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

schools of law and medicine. This university has not 
had the too strict constraint of the old traditions of the 
college, and like the other state universities, it has de- 
veloped broadly toward agriculture and the applied 
sciences. At the same time, gifts have furnished it great 
annexes for pure science, like the Lick Observatory on 
Mount Hamilton, and the biological station which Pro- 
fessor Ritter directs, at La Jolla, near San Diego, on the 
Mexican frontier. 

I did not have a chance to visit Cornell University, at 
Ithaca, in New York state, ^ and I regret it, for, in a 
quite different landscape, it evokes the same happy ideas 
as Berkeley. 

From M. Paul Marchal's book, which I have already 
had occasion to cite, I quote the following description, 
which gives at once a very lively and a very attractive 
impression of it. 

"It spreads over a large wooded plateau," says M. 
Marchal, ''bounded by cliffs which overlook the town 
and beautiful Lake Cayuga. Isolated by rocky gorges, 
through which narrowly confined torrents fall in cas- 
cades, it is accessible only by suspension bridges thrown 
from one wall to the other, and crossing above the 
gigantic tops of the century-old tsugas. 

"This land, which measures not less than 1200 acres, 
is an immense stretch of verdure, woodland, and prairie, 
whose continuity is broken only by avenues and paths 
permitting approach to the various university build- 
ings. A complete city rises there, whose buildings, 
isolated from one another, emerge from the midst of 
luxuriant foliage. First there are the many buildings 

1 The school of medicine of this university is at New York City. 



UNIVERSITIES 37 

in which are sumptuously installed the departments of 
the eight colleges and of the school of advanced studies, 
which compose the university. Of very diverse archi- 
tectural types, often half-veiled beneath a mantle of 
climbing plants, they display the perspective of their 
gables and porticos along shady avenues, or are arranged 
in gigantic quadrilaterals, around carpets of verdure 
with trees in quincunxes. Farther on, in the charming 
setting of an English park, are grouped on a slope, and 
under the shade of large trees, the luxurious houses be- 
longing to the different clubs or university associations 
(fraternities). Finally, the extreme northeast of the 
campus is occupied by dwellings for the president and 
professors of the university. They are grouped in a 
charming hamlet, composed of cottages scattered among 
trees and flower beds. Dominating the whole, rises the 
tall silhouette of the campanile, which thrice a day, in 
a sweet and joyous melody, sends forth the call of its 
chimes." 

Such is the real setting in which Americans of today 
place their new universities. This civilization, which is 
above all urban, and whose cities are immense, never- 
theless has not lost the feeling for nature. Are not 
students and professors incited to broad and living con- 
ceptions by always contemplating a wide horizon.? 

What a contrast with our stunted Faculties, rebuilt 
even recently in the centres of cities, and which no one 
dared to put outside them, in spite of the idea having 
been formulated. The Sorbonne, Darboux said very 
justly, is arranged like a trans- Atlantic mail liner. That 
is to say, for active life and needs which exact the broad- 
est foresight and the greatest freedom of transforma- 



38 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

tion, we have placed ourselves in the severest conditions 
of confinement. Thus the Sorbonne was not finished 
when already new departments which required a place 
in it could not be accommodated. 

It is true that the American universities are, in them- 
selves alone, cities whose numerous students suffice to 
populate and enliven them, and with university cus- 
toms which are not ours. They can be sufficient to 
themselves, without being tributary to the great city. 
But whoever has contemplated the lawns of their 
grounds and the verdure of their trees, where the labora- 
tories are hidden away; whoever has seen a numerous 
youth, full of the joy of living, passing through them, 
cannot but find all our university buildings terribly 
sinister, be they of the purest Louis XIII style, arid 
cannot but pity those who have to study in them. One 
would be tempted to complete the republican motto on 
the pediments of our buildings with the line from Dante: 

"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate." 



CHAPTER IV 

UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY 

Harvard, the Corporation and the Board of Overseers. Part played by the 
Alumni. Other universities. Trustees and Regents. The President. His 
powers and position. 

WE must now see these great universities in action. 
We shall examine first the central organ which 
regulates and coordinates their activity, their admin- 
istration. What precedes has given an idea of the mul- 
tiplicity and complexity of their machinery. They have 
a large population of students, often running into the 
thousands, a working force of professors and instruc- 
tors which reaches up to 700 or 800 persons, and they 
are at the same time, great estates with many buildings; 
they have funds of twenty and thirty millions of dol- 
lars, and an annual budget which often amounts to 
more than two million dollars of expenditures. 

Here again, under the diversity of details due to the 
complete autonomy of each of them, in the present and 
in the past, we find at bottom a very great uniformity, 
which reflects the college tradition and the American 
mind in general. The present-day university is gov- 
erned, in a word, as was the college, in spite of the trans- 
formation which has taken place. The tradition, and 
especially the spirit of the college, survive with perhaps 
excessive vigor. The result is, sometimes, as we shall 
see, very intense friction. 

As the first example, let us again take Harvard, in 
which the friction in question has been reduced to the 



40 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

minimum, and is scarcely felt. In its broad lines Har- 
vard has kept its seventeenth-century constitution, save 
that the representatives of the state have little by little 
been completely eliminated from its councils. The exec- 
utive power is in the hands of the Corporation, which 
consists of the president, the treasurer and five members, 
the President and Fellows of Harvard College, and is 
self-perpetuating. The Corporation manages entirely 
the finances and property, chooses the president, ap- 
points and recalls the professors, and grants the diplo- 
mas. Its power is without appeal, but nevertheless it 
is controlled by a sort of advisory council, provided 
with the right of veto, the Board of Overseers. In its 
present form, the latter has thirty members, chosen for 
six years, and renewed each year in groups of ^ve, by 
election. This election takes place at the festivities at 
the end of the academic year, at Commencement, when 
the diplomas are presented. 

All former graduates, the alumni, present at these 
festivities, have the right to vote. This board is there- 
fore a direct emanation from the body of the alumni, 
who thereby exercise a general control over the progress 
of the university. 

This participation of former students in the manage- 
ment of the university, totally unknown to us in France, 
is a heritage from the English tradition. It is a power- 
ful bond between the institution and all those whose 
Alma Mater it has been; it makes of the university a 
really living and loved person, and not an abstract 
emanation from the state. It is a fundamental trait of 
the constitution of every American university, and it 
finds its place even in the state universities. "It is 
natural and proper," says Mr. Charles W. EHot,! "to 

* Science, December 15, 1905. 



UNIVERSITIES 41 

give some influence over the fortunes of a college or uni- 
versity to the body of its graduates, as soon as this body 
becomes large and strong." 

At Harvard, however, the alumni exercise their in- 
fluence only by way of control. They have no power 
over the composition of the Corporation, and the latter, 
at least at present, includes no member of the Faculty, 
scholar or professor, outside of the president; its mem- 
bers are Harvard men who have arrived at a high social 
position, business men, bankers, prominent citizens, 
like Mr. Robert Bacon, who was ambassador to France. 
The president alone therefore, represents the truly 
technical side; his fellows can help him especially by 
their business experience, in the financial management 
of the university. 

The overseers, in fact, are also chiefly social notabili- 
ties; the share of the intellectuals is small, and many 
regret it. That expresses the fact that the dominant 
preoccupations of the body of the alumni are not of an 
intellectual order. They love profoundly their univer- 
sity, they interest themselves in its prosperity, and sus- 
tain it materially with a mighty generosity, but in the 
memories of youth which attach them to it, the intel- 
lectual side plays but a minor part. 

The system with two bodies, which Harvard offers, 
is an exception. In general there is but one council, 
ordinarily called Board of Trustees or in the state uni- 
versities. Board of Regents. In some cases this board 
is self -perpetuating; more often it is elected, at least in 
part, by the alumni. In the state universities it in- 
cludes members ex officio such as the governor of the 
state, and members elected either by the state legisla- 
ture, or directly by the people. In these universities, 



42 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

politics weighs more or less heavily upon their govern- 
ment. But it must be observed that this is not directly 
in the hands of the general government. There is 
always a council interposed, and as a consequence, 
large autonomy. Sometimes the board of trustees is 
very numerous, and in that case it delegates most of 
its powers to a commission of which the president is a 
member. 

I cannot think of describing here in detail of varieties 
which different universities offer. There is, neverthe- 
less, an interesting example, Cornell University, which 
is of a hybrid nature, a private university by its foun- 
dation, and a state institution in that it has received 
lands allotted to New York state under the Morrill 
Act, and because, moreover, it still receives other special 
subventions from that state. Its Board of Trustees is 
very composite. It includes fifteen self-perpetuating 
trustees, ten elected by the alumni (among these, a 
woman was elected in 1912), ^ve designated by the gov- 
ernor of New York state, and ten members ex officio.^ 

The character common to all these variants is that 
the professors have no share in the constitution of the 
governing board, and that of all interests concerned, 
those of an intellectual and technical order are the only 
ones not directly represented in an assured manner. 
That is incontestably a defect, against which numerous 
voices are justly raised. 

The council of trustees or regents governs, in a gen- 
eral way, the whole university, as formerly it governed 

^ The Governor and Lieutenant Governor of New York, the president of 
the legislature, the State Commissioner of Public Instruction, and State 
Commissioner of Agriculture, the President of the State Agricultural Society, 
the trustee of the Ithaca Public Library, the President of the University, 
and the eldest of the male descendants of Ezra Cornell. 



UNIVERSITIES 43 

the college. However, with the growing diversification 
and the enormous extension of the university with the 
special conditions under which each of its parts func- 
tions, certain of them must have more or less autonomy, 
and their own council, provided with greater or less 
powers. Here are some examples. A few years ago, 
Columbia University incorporated an institution till 
then distinct, Teachers' College, at once a normal school 
amd a school of applied arts, which is very large and by 
itself numbers about 2000 students. This college has 
kept its own board of trustees and governs itself. The 
Scripps Institution for Biological Research, a biological 
station established at La Jolla, near San Diego, at the 
southern extremity of California, is connected with the 
university at Berkeley. Founded with gifts specially 
restricted to it, it has its own council, which is in fact 
autonomous, whose decisions must merely be, in princi- 
ple, confirmed by the regents of the university. You 
can imagine the multiplicity of degrees with which such 
autonomy may be invested, according to the circum- 
stances and the flexibility which that possibility as- 
sures. 

The board of trustees was an organization on the 
scale of the older colleges, in which the unity was ab- 
solute, and which had only a limited number of pro- 
fessors and students. It needs to be adapted to the 
scale of the new institutions and to their needs. ^ The 
technical incompetence and the excess of power of the 
trustees or regents are evidently a serious fault of the 

^ See on this subject, the projects of reform, in a very democratic spirit, 
suggested by Professor J. McK. Cattell, "University Control," Science, 
May 24-31, 1012, and the inquiry organized by him, the results of which the 
same journal has pubUshed. 



44 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

present regime, and this fault has increased through 
over-growth, which is a peril to universities as well as 
to organisms. The problem is evidently to give a suf- 
ficient autonomy to the parts which are individualized, 
while maintaining a coordination in the whole. 

In reality, there are correctives for the system, and I 
have seen one functioning at Harvard, which appeared 
very interesting to me, that is, what is called the visit- 
ing committees. The Board of Overseers, to accom- 
plish its mission of control, names special commissions 
for each of the schools or institutions, or even for each 
of the departments which compose the university or the 
college. The members of these commissions are former 
students, chosen either for their competence or for their 
moral weight. I saw one of them accomplishing its 
mission with the absence of formalism and the gentle- 
manly spirit which impregnates the whole mind of this 
society. The members of the committee can gather 
from everyone suggestions and complaints of every 
nature, weigh them in their conscience as men not de- 
formed by official life, and carry the echo of them to the 
overseers, themselves charged with the general control 
of the university. That is evidently a very flexible 
system, and one which grows out of the habit of self- 
government of the old protestant English communities. 

The president of the university is the head and the 
working hand of the board of trustees. He carries out 
their decisions and proposes to them the measures he 
considers necessary. At least that is the usual case. 
There are a few universities in which the president is 
not a member of the board, but is merely answerable 
to it. 



UNIVERSITIES 45 

In reality power is concentrated in the hands of the 
president, who alone follows closely the life of the uni- 
versity, and is, in most circumstances — at least those 
which concern internal management — the only com- 
petent authority. His almost unavoidable policy is to 
induce the trustees or regents to leave to him the maxi- 
mum of initiative and freedom. 

The president of an American university has thus 
considerable power, and is only exceptionally sub- 
jected to effective control. In any case, the professorial 
body cannot take any action contrary to him. The 
president has at the same time a considerable and pre- 
cise responsibility of direction. Is not the President of 
the United States himself invested with enormous 
powers.^ In every business, the man who is at the head, 
and who also is generally called the president, has 
almost absolute powers of management. There is room 
in America for energetic men who love action. They 
are not trammeled there. The seed can grow. The 
environment is propitious, for it does not lead, as with 
us, to the irresponsibility which destroys character. 

On the president of the university rests the care of 
assuring the progress and material success of the in- 
stitution, and as its material needs are always large, 
one of his principal functions is to find the goodwill to 
furnish the necessary resources. He must conciliate 
the legislature in state universities, or in private uni- 
versities adroitly rouse the generosity of the alumni 
a task which is not always easy in spite of the loyalty 
of the alumni. Every alumnus, says a president, wants 
to see the college grow, up to the day when you turn 
to him. 

As to the personnel, the president has almost dis- 



46 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

cretionary powers. In most universities, the choice of 
professors, their nomination, promotion, and recall, are 
without appeal in the hands of the trustees, and in fact 
of the president. It is not astonishing that this regime 
sometimes gives occasion for very just discontent. Mr. 
J. McK. Cattell, whose democratic spirit is very muck 
opposed to this function, says of it that it makes the 
president rather a boss than a leader. "In the academic 
jungle," he humorously says, "the president is my black 
beast." 1 

The president is the tyrant, good or bad. A good 
tyranny is a rule which has many advantages and the 
fact cannot be contested that certain American uni- 
versities have owed a large growth and prosperity to 
having had at their head for a long time an active, en- 
terprising president with broad and well-advised views. 
Mr. Charles W. Ehot, raised to the presidency of Har- 
vard in 1869, at the age of thirty-five years, conducted 
the institution during forty years with a firm and sure 
hand, and under his leadership Harvard has been one 
of the chief guides in the evolution of American higher 
education. The first president of Johns Hopkins, Gil- 
man, has played a role of the same order. The Uni- 
versity of Chicago was opened in 1890, under the 
presidency of W. R. Harper, then thirty-six years old, 
and during the fourteen years he remained at its head 
it rose to the first rank. 

At the present time the personality of the president 
is moreover particularly important. The American 
university, according to what we have already seen, is 
in a transitional phase between the college tradition 
and the spirit of real higher education and scientific 

1 Science, May 31, 1912, p. 845. 



UNIVERSITIES 47 

research. The equilibrium between these two tenden- 
cies, or its rupture for the profit of one or the other, is 
largely in the hands of the president. 

The real paradox of the situation is that while having 
these extended powers and while thus administering 
the entire university from above, the president exer- 
cises authority directly in details, with scarcely any 
intermediate organs. Thus success in these functions 
is difficult in proportion to the power which they confer. 
The president of a new college in Oregon, Mr. W. T. 
Foster, 1 had the idea of visiting, at the beginning of his 
presidency, 105 colleges or universities, scattered over 
29 states, and to inform himself upon the moral posi- 
tion of the president. In 51 cases he was able to form a 
clear opinion. There were 34, or two-thirds, in which 
the president distinctly gave dissatisfaction. It is evi- 
dently difficult for him to content everybody. He must 
be a scholar, says Mr. Foster, often a professor too (in 
many second-class institutions he continues to teach 
while president). He has the duty of watching the 
teaching of others. He must be a business man, and it 
is certainly less complex and more remunerative to 
direct a commercial business. He must find funds for 
the university, represent it, have happy relations with 
the alumni, students, and visiting strangers. He must 
be ready to speak at numerous meetings at any moment 
and on any subject; be able to guide the trustees 
through questions they are not acquainted with, to get 
along with the cliques in the faculty, to keep the pro- 
fessors patient, who are expecting promotion. The task 
is impossible, Mr. Foster concludes. It must be divided, 
while continuing to centralize responsibihty. 

1 Science, May 2, 1913, p. 653. 



48 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

The professorial staff suffers, in a general way, from 
the autocracy of the president,^ except in those univer- 
sities in which he knows how to use it with discretion, 
and in which, without being obliged by the regula- 
tions, he carefully consults, for example, the compe- 
tent professors in regard to nominations to be made. 
But even with the best intentions, a man cannot under- 
stand equally well all needs and all tendencies. He will 
favor necessarily those which accord with his personal 
preferences. 

Abuses of power and conflicts result from this situa- 
tion, which are none the less unfortunate for being only 
the rather rare exceptions. Professors have been bru- 
tally dismissed from certain universities without even 
being permitted to defend themselves, simply for hav- 
ing expressed opinions displeasing to the president or 
trustees. There are evidently legitimate dismissals — 
although arousing the discontent of the interested 
parties — but the right of defense ought to be broadly 
assured, and the proof that, in more than one case, 
wrongs have been done, is that certain professors thus 
dismissed have been welcomed afterward by universities 
of the first order, such as Harvard. It has happened 
that facts of this kind have provoked resignations en 
masse and the exodus of most of the professors. In 1913, 

1 Here is a declaration coming certainly from a sincere conviction, but 
which seems to me very typical. The President of Vermont University, at 
his inauguration, declared to his faculty, "I should say to you, in perfect 
candor, at this time, in order that there may be no misunderstanding from 
the beginning, that I will not serve on a teaching body with any man who 
uses intoxicating liquors in any form whatsoever." {Science, October 13, 
1911, p. 491.) He declared before elsewhere, that the use of beer and wine 
is degrading. One may judge from the categorical force of this declaration, 
to what lengths the president's power may extend and be exercised in 
practice. 



UNIVERSITIES 49 

at the University of the State of Utah, there were 
eighteen such resignations. These conflicts have ended 
by bringing about the formation of an association of 
college and university professors, which in the case of 
the University of Utah, sent a committee to the spot 
to make a regular investigation. 

The omnipotence of the trustees and of the president, 
not counterbalanced by a control by the professors, is a 
subject of widespread uneasiness at the present time. 
In this regard, the American college has evolved from 
its English origins in a quite opposite direction to that 
of the English college itself. The latter is a monachal 
democracy, and the master is, among the fellows, only 
primus inter pares. A movement is undeniably appear- 
ing in the United States in favor of a more democratic 
reconstruction of the university.^ This transforma- 
tion, on the other hand, would have the inconveniences 
inherent in every democratic government, and we ought 
in truth to admit that the bodies actually administering 
the universities are in a very general way animated with 
perfect disinterestedness and inspired by an ardent will 
to assure their prosperity and success. To the trustees, 
especially in the old institutions, the university is a 
living and loved person, and not a cold administrative 
machine. The presidents too, have the highest idea of 
their task, and unreservedly consecrate to the develop- 
ment of their university the personal strength of char- 
acter and energy for which they were chosen. 

^ See J. McK, Cattell, " University Control," he. dt. 



CHAPTER V 



THE PROFESSORS 



General conditions of the career. Moral and material desiderata. Excessive 
burden of teaching. Insufficient participation in the management. Precari- 
ous guaranties. Advances in the career. Salary. Retirement pensions. 
The Carnegie Foundation. 

OF all the elements of which a university is con- 
stituted, the professorial staff is evidently the most 
essential. At times, in some countries, it has a tendency 
to believe that it itself is the only one of which it is 
necessary to take account, but this is evidently exces- 
sive. Still it remains none the less true that on the 
worth of the individuals who compose it, depends all 
the intellectual strength of the institution. Therefore 
the conditions of the recruiting and of the career of the 
professors have a great importance for the evolution 
of the university and for its scientific productivity. On 
the other hand, the professors represent a collectivity 
whose interests are distinct at once from those of the 
administration, which we have just studied, and from 
those of the students and alumni, which we shall con- 
sider hereafter. 

If we except a few privileged universities, the ma- 
terial and moral position of the professors in the United 
States is modest. "The young American," says Mr. 
Charles W. Eliot, "who chooses the university career, 
must abandon all prospect of wealth and of luxury 
which a fortune alone can procure. What he can 
reasonably hope for is an assured income, a stable 



UNIVERSITIES 51 

position, long vacations, the satisfaction of intellectual 
tastes, good comradeships in study, teaching or re- 
search, large resources in books, and an honorable but 
simple way of living." Still, that is a picture drawn by 
an administrator, inclined to optimism in the matter, 
on principle. 

American professors make known today desires of 
two sorts, some moral, others material. We shall ex- 
amine them in succession. 

The first of these desiderata relates to the excessive 
burden of teaching. The essential function of higher 
education is research. It is not a question of sacrificing 
teaching to it, but the professors of a university must 
be left freedom of mind and time enough to under- 
take and conduct research successfully. However, in 
America, they have almost daily lectures. The majority 
of these doubtless do not call for much preparation. 
But meanwhile the professors have too many commit- 
tee meetings and cares of an administrative order, and 
they must occupy themselves too much with the 
students individually. That is not the right pace to set 
for advanced teaching. ^ This is due to the college 
spirit, and to the unpreparedness of the students who 
come to it. But though the fact be explained, it re- 
mains, none the less. 

The second desire of the teaching staff is included in 
the preceding chapter: it is the counterpart of the 
president's situation. In most universities the profes- 
sors demand a regular share in the government of the 

^ Our American colleagues have, however, from the point of view of vaca- 
tions, the very enviable privilege, every seven years, of being able to take a 
half or even a whole year of leave, which they call a sabbatical year. They 
receive fuU pay for six months, or half -pay if they are absent an entire year. 



5^ UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

institution, and in the mechanism assuring the recruit- 
ing of its personnel, as well as greater security in the 
positions gained. The faculties deliberate frequently 
and long, but often on petty questions of detail. All 
that really concerns the general progress of the uni- 
versity remains outside of these deliberations. 

As we have seen, the professors have no normal rep- 
resentation in the directing council. The influence of 
business men is valuable in order to administer skil- 
fully the funds of the university, and that of the alumni 
is equally favorable. But neither the one nor the other 
is a guarantee for the general intellectual interests nor 
for the special interests of the professors. 

Especially if it is a question of choosing a specialist 
to provide certain instruction, it is a principle recognized 
everywhere, although often insufficiently applied, that 
the advice of competent persons is one of the primordial 
elements of the choice to be made. Yet the college pro- 
fessors, the faculty, have no official and legal share in 
these appointments, which are the act of the president 
and trustees alone. In reality, broad-minded and well- 
advised presidents consult competent persons in their 
faculty, but only out of courtesy and at their good 
pleasure. There is very just complaint at that, formu- 
lated many times in late years, and the justice of which 
is recognized, besides, by many university presidents. 

Without doubt it will come about before long, follow- 
ing the characteristic and fortunate principle of the 
English mind, that a reform must be proclaimed by 
law when it has already been consecrated in practice. 

If the professors have no regular part in their recruit- 
ing, they also lack precise guarantees of the possession 
of their positions. That is due to a general trait of 



UNIVERSITIES 53 

American customs, which has advantages for society. 
There are no fully assured positions in which one can 
go to sleep in security and inaction, at the expense of 
the interests over which one is to keep watch. The 
plague of officialism is thus avoided. Everyone must 
constantly justify his function by real activity. 

Most chairs are given in a temporary manner. The 
instructors are appointed annually; the assistant pro- 
fessors for short periods, most often for three years. 
The associate and full professors are appointed without 
limit of time, but without guaranty; during good be- 
havior, or at the pleasure of the trustees, say many con- 
tracts. The administration thus has a weapon in its 
hands, which it can use at almost any instant against 
the professors. 

It uses it in fact only in very rare cases, but it is none 
the less a redoubtable menace, and one against which 
the professors are at present without recourse. They 
desire irremovability, life-tenure of their chairs, at 
least in the higher grades, when they have been tried; 
it concerns their security and their dignity. 

Above all they ask a regular procedure by which they 
can controvert the complaints which are lodged against 
them. They totally lack guarantees which higher teach- 
ing possesses in other countries. Accordingly from time 
to time, discussions arise, like that which occurred in 
1913 at Philadelphia, following the dismissal of an 
assistant professor of political economy. It seemed that 
this dismissal was due to certain opinions expressed by 
him in public lectures given outside the university. 
The tone of the discussion which followed, in the news- 
papers, is especially characteristic, the fact itself being 
difficult to appreciate here. The Public Ledger, one of 



54 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

the most important and weightiest newspapers of Phila- 
delphia, summed up the affair by declaring, "The public 
has every right to know whether its greatest institu- 
tion of learning is free to seek the truth and to proclaim 
it without fear, or whether it is constrained to keep 
silent every opinion in political or economic matters, 
which is not momentarily to the taste of the Trustees." 

This affair ^ ended, moreover, in causing a modifica- 
tion of the statutes or by-laws of the university, by the 
trustees, in a direction which recognizes that the claims 
of the professors were right. A right of consultation 
concerning appointments, of permanent appointments 
as full professors, and appearance before a board of 
their peers before every dismissal, have in fact been 
granted to the professors in the University of Pennsyl- 
vania. 

There is undoubtedly a very general movement of 
opinion in the universities on these questions at pres- 
ent, which seems on the point of leading to important 
reforms. The formation of an association of professors, 
to discuss them and to bring them about, is a character- 
istic symptom. The uneasiness scarcely exists in the 
most powerful universities, which are at the same time 
the most liberal in regard to their personnel, as is the 
case with Harvard and a few others. ^ 

1 Cf. Science, 1915, no. 2. 

2 In fact, these questions so to speak do not exist at Harvard. Tradition 
has estabHshed in that old university, more than anywhere else, at once 
among administrative officers and those under them, a sort of cooperative 
spirit which, till now at least, has kept them out. 

Most of the professors do not even wish for a more direct participation 
in administration and in appointments, fearing that it would introduce in- 
trigues which would be prejudicial to the spirit of trustful comradeship and 
cordiality which reigns in the teaching staff. They rely on the corporation 
the more willingly because in their eyes it incarnates the Harvard spirit 



UNIVERSITIES 55 

An interesting general study of these questions will 
be found in the articles published in 1912, in Science, 
by Mr. J. McK. Cattell, under the title "University 
Control." He prepared a complete plan of reforms, on 
the subject of which he conducted an inquiry among 
the scientific professors of the various universities. 
The intention of the reform he outlined was the demo- 
cratization of the university organization, the reduction 
of the president's powers, and especially the subdivi- 
sion of the university, which has become a giant, into 
smaller homogeneous units, as largely autonomous as 
the harmonious functioning of the whole would permit. 
I cannot enter into the detail of these propositions 
and of this inquiry here. The 229 replies which Mr. 
Cattell received to his questionnaire were rather diver- 
gent, as is natural in so complex a problem. He analyzes 
the reasons for which on the whole they reflect the 
general opinion very exactly. The great majority were 
clearly favorable to an extended reform, and 184, or 
approximately two-thirds, adopted the proposed plan 
in its broad lines. The universities in which the govern- 

and devotion to the institution. The professors, they note, do not form so 
homogeneous a body. A notable part are of origin foreign to Harvard, and 
they wisely maintain that it should be so, in order to avoid the danger of 
inbreeding, while assuring constantly the renewal of ideas by the introduc- 
tion of outside elements. Harvard reflects well the old English spirit, by 
which things draw their force from the consecration of use rather than from 
the written letter. Thus it is that for appointments of professors there is 
not even a written contract, and yet in fact irremovability is complete. Be- 
fore aU else, they count on mutual loyalty. Similarly, although the consul- 
tation with professors is not written in the by-laws, it takes place in fact. 
The general principle is to keep the maximum of flexibility in all things. So 
to speak, there are no permanent chairs. Vacancies are filled to meet the 
needs which the present state of ideas and of the sciences suggests, and 
not by tenaciously keeping a branch of instruction because it existed 
yesterday. 



56 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

ment is the most liberal were those where the least 
changes were desired. Those in which the autocracy of 
the president was, on the contrary, the most effective, 
were the most in favor of reform. Some administrative 
officers, almost alone, favored the status quo. 

Such are the complaints of a moral order which the 
professors formulate. The general organization of the 
American university is certainly behind that of the 
other great scientific nations, as to the independence of 
the teaching staff. 

It is no less interesting to examine the financial situa- 
tion of the professors. First let us follow them through 
the various phases of their career. 

The Bachelor of Arts who is looking forward to a pro- 
fessorship, remains at the university as a graduate 
after his four years of college, and spends three years in 
becoming a Doctor of Philosophy, Ph.D., a title which 
he obtains when about twenty-seven or twenty-eight 
years old. If he is not rich, he has been dogged by 
physical necessities during this period. These necessi- 
ties are often more or less alleviated by scholarships or 
fellowships provided by private foundations and in com- 
pensation for which he has often already taken part, as 
assistant, in teaching. These subsidies sometimes have 
the form of traveling fellowships. They have some- 
times been criticized as tempting mediocre individuals, 
who without them would have been eliminated by 
selection. But it suffices in order to justify them, to 
show that some of the most noteworthy men have 
been able, thanks to them, to pass the difficult period. 
That is what Mr. E. B. Wilson remarked concerning 
himself. 



UNIVERSITIES 57 

About the time of his doctorate, the future professor 
arrives at his first regular functions, on being appointed 
instructor. The instructor is the equivalent of the pre- 
parateur or chef de travaux pratiques of our faculties of 
sciences, but he exists in every branch of teaching and 
not only in the case of the experimental sciences. He 
is charged with following closely the studies of a group 
of students. That is an excellent idea; the organization 
of a good corps of instructors is the best way of as- 
suring the regularity and solidity of studies for the 
students. The instructor is in general reappointed 
annually. 

The following stage is that of assistant professor, ^ 
which can be compared to that of our maitrises de con^ 
fSrences. The assistant professor is generally appointed 
for limited periods of time, most often for three years, 
which may be renewed. From the intellectual point of 
view, he is completely free in his teaching. 

After a rather long time passed as assistant professor 
— automatically at the end of eight or ten years in cer- 
tain privileged universities, like Harvard — or, more 
often according to the circumstances and the vacancies, 
he becomes a full professor, that is to say, professeur 
titulaire, or associate professor. This last grade answers 
very well to our professorat-adjoint, but in many uni- 
versities it is a sort of shelving process for those who 

1 Mr, G. Marx published in Science, May 14, 1909, March 18-25, 1910, an 
investigation of the professor's career and especially of assistant professors. 
The result of it is that the average age in this rank is thirty-six years. The 
average age at appointment is thirty-one. For 120 persons who were investi- 
gated, the average duration of their studies had been seven years. Sixty-five 
per cent of them had had scholarships, and 45 per cent of those in this latter 
class had not been able, nevertheless, to finish their studies without contract- 
ing debts which burden their finances for some time. 



58 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

have hardly any chance of reaching the full professor- 
ship. 

This hierarchy is very uniform in the various insti- 
tutions, but beneath the unity of names the real situa- 
tions are very different, materially and morally. 

It will be noted that at Harvard, which in many 
respects can be regarded as the standard university, 
advancement is automatic, or at least largely independ- 
ent of circumstances. That might produce what in 
France is called titularisation personnelle. But we must 
note, in justice to this advancement by the mere pas- 
sage of time, undoubtedly deadly to an indispensable 
selection, that there are two capital correctives, which 
really maintain an efficacious selection. The first is the 
grade of associate professor, as has just been explained. 
The second is the fact that only the men who have a 
certain worth tend to remain at Harvard to round out 
their whole career. The inferior are brought by the 
force of things to emigrate sooner or later into the less 
important universities, or even abandon the calling in 
the first years. 

To what in salary do the various degrees of the hier- 
archy correspond .f^ If we represent the average pay of 
full professors by 100, that of the other grades is rep- 
resented by the following figures,^ in a few universities 
which I have chosen as examples. 

Harvard Cornell Stanford Wisconsin California 

Instructor 23.7 29.1 33.1 38 

Assistant professor 61.6 54.7 45.8 59 49.4 

Associate professor 81.6 ... 63.4 75 68.8 

The instructor in the large universities begins with a 
salary of $1000 to $1200 and receives annual increases 

1 Science, May 14, 1909. 



UNIVERSITIES 



59 



of $100 to $200 up to a maximum of $1600 (Harvard) 
or $2000 (Columbia). 



Salary 



Instruc- 
tors 



Assistant 

and 
Associate 
Professors 



Full 
Professors 



Total 
Number 



Per Cent 
of Total 



Compar- 
ative Per- 
centage for 
the Per- 
sonnel of 
the Public 

High 

Schools, in 

1908 



Less than $750. . 

$750-$1249 

1250- 1749 

1750- 2249 

2250- 2749 

2750- 3249 

3250- 3749 

3750- 4249 

4250- 4749 

4750- 5249 

5250- 5749 

5750- 5249 

More than $6250 
Total 



51 
911 

386 
29 



74 

447 

483 

194 

76 

17 

9 



1,380 



1,300 



12 
147 

227 

266 

286 

205 

194 

67 

95 

40 

25 

18 

1,582 



51 

997 

980 

739 

463 

362 

222 

203 

67 

95 

40 

25 

18 

4,262 



1.2 

23.4 

23.0 

17.3 

10.9 

8.5 

5.2 

4.8 

1.6 

2.2 

0.9 

0.6 

0.4 

100.0 



30.5 
44.3 
13.0 
7.1 
3.1 
1.6 
0.5 



100.1 



The salary of an assistant professor varies, under the 
same conditions, from $1800 to $3500; that of full 
professors from $3000 to $5000. ^ Harvard and Colum- 
bia are, in a general way, the universities in which the 
salaries are the highest and in which the personal situa- 
tion is the safest. 2 In order to judge the financial 
situation of all the professors, I reproduce the statistics^ 

^ The normal pay of full professors at Harvard varies froto $4000 to 
$5000, by increases of $500 every five years. 

2 The percentage to the total of the salaries to the total budget of ex- 
penses varies from 37 per cent (University of Missouri) to 75 per cent 
(Columbia, Princeton, Pennsylvania, New York University). The cost, 
calculated per capita of the students, varies from $100 (University of Syra- 
cuse) to $475 (Harvard, Johns Hopkins). 

3 Science, June 12, 1914. 



60 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

condensed in the table on p. 59, and borrowed from 
a work executed by the Carnegie Foundation for the 
Advancement of Teaching. It deals with 61 colleges 
of varying importance and relates to the year 1912-13, 
As another indication, taken from the same source, 
concerning 201 full professors of Harvard and Columbia: 

4 receive less than $3000 



12 


ii 


from 




3000 to $400( 


35 


u 






4000 


30 


u 






4500 


44 


ti 






5000 


38 


u 


from 




5000 to 5500 


21 


a 






6000 


17 


u 


more 


than 


6000 



The preceding figures, converted into francs, give 
much higher numbers than the French salaries. But 
in order to judge them, we must of course put them in 
the surrounding conditions of life. On the whole, the 
situation of professors of American universities is col- 
lectively notably better than that of their French col- 
leagues, yet is not, for all that, more than mediocre. 
The pay is not at all in proportion to the severity of the 
previous selection, nor to the social function performed; 
and it furnishes the family, in the setting of American 
life, only a very restricted budget. Consideration for 
the profession by the masses, who judge according to 
the salary, is very slight. The university profession has 
not in general, the moral and worldly situation which 
it deserves in a rich democracy like that of the United 
States, and which it ought to have in order to retain a 
high class of men.^ 

^ These considerations of course apply to France, where also the univer- 
sity career is too mediocre financially and too uncertain. They apply, more- 
over, to almost all countries. In Germany, by the confession of the most 



UNIVERSITIES 61 

The professors complain that the enormous develop- 
ment of the universities and colleges in the past thirty 
years has been made at their expense. The increase of 
their pay, contrary to the ease of most professions, has 
not even followed that of the cost of living. Besides, 
the ratio of the number of full professors to that of the 
students and of the professors of lower grades has been 
constantly on the decrease. Access to the best posi- 
tions thus becomes more difficult and more tardy, 
while the quality of the personnel has been improved. 
Many instructors of today, they say, are as good as 
professors of yesterday. Mr. G Marx ^ sees the reason 
for this disproportion in the fact that the managing 
councils, the boards of trustees, have too often sacrificed 
the interests of the teaching staff to the development of 
the exterior, in order to attract and maintain the pat- 
ronage, by exaggerated increase in the number of 
branches of instruction, construction of sumptuous 
new buildings, exaggerated luxury of all the university 

esteemed professors, it seems that the generation which is coming into its 
university chairs is not as worthy as the older, because the finest of the youth 
have recently been too much attracted by the development of industry. Ger- 
man universities have, moreover, owed a part of their vitaUty to the constant 
afflux of foreigners to its chairs. This afflux was explained, as we must recog- 
nize, in part by the strength of their organization and of their professorial 
staff, but also in part by the superstition of the entire world regarding the 
virtues of German things. The academic career itself is, in the generaUty 
of cases, very mediocre in Germany from the point of view of money. But 
it attracted, on the one hand by reason of the consideration which it enjoyed, 
and on the other hand because in almost all specialties there were some chairs 
bringing in a great deal. It was the big prize which each one, at the begin- 
ning, hoped to win, and which made them take the lottery tickets, that is to 
say, which determined them to enter upon the career. With us, on the con- 
trary, the big prizes do not exist. There is no incentive to activity. Good 
and bad are recompensed about equally, 
1 Science, May 14, 1909. 



62 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

life. They have almost always preferred to satisfy 
needs of this kind to the detriment of the personnel. 
These faults are of course greatest in institutions of the 
second and third class because of the spirit of bigness 
and the ambition to follow, at any price, the example 
of the great. 

In order to complete this picture of the material and 
moral position of the professors, I will say a word about 
the end of their career and about the question of pen- 
sions. Aside from certain large universities, it seems 
that until a few years ago, nothing was provided on that 
score. The professors taught as long as they could, or 
as long as the trustees found them in a state of good 
behavior. It was left for them to take, by insurance, 
the necessary measures of foresight, and certain people 
are still of opinion that that was a good system. In 
these Anglo-Saxon countries, the individual is used to 
counting only on himself. Fifteen years ago, Mr. 
Andrew Carnegie, desirous "of serving the cause of 
higher education by improving the teaching profession 
and augmenting its dignity," devoted a part of his for- 
tune to the creation of a system of retirement pensions. 
On the one hand, he instituted the Carnegie Corpora- 
tion of New York, for "advancement and diffusion of 
knowledge and understanding," endowed with 125 mil- 
lion dollars, and in 1905 the Carnegie Foundation for 
the Advancement of Teaching. This latter, at the end 
of 1913, had been endowed by him with 15 million 
dollars, and under the administration of a board of 
trustees, composed mainly of university presidents, it 
was charged with organizing a system of pensions in 
the universities and colleges. Mr. Carnegie excluded, 



UNIVERSITIES 68 

however, at the beginning, the state universities, think- 
ing that the state must do what is needful for them; 
and all the sectarian institutions. Those only which 
are undenominational were called to benefit from the 
Foundation. It is admirable to see an individual pro- 
pose to himself the realization of a work of such breadth. 

The rules adopted by the Carnegie Foundation recog- 
nized the right to a pension at sixty-five years of age, 
and fifteen years of teaching with at least the grade of 
assistant professor, or indeed after twenty-five years of 
teaching thus defined, without condition of age, or 
finally indeed in case of infirmity. The amount of the 
pension is based on the pay of the last five years, with 
a maximum of $3000. It can reach as much as 90 per 
cent of that pay, when it does not go over $1600. Wid- 
ows have a right to half of their husband's pension. 
All this is applicable only to persons for whom teaching 
is the essential profession, and not, for example, to 
physicians and engineers, for whom it is only an acces- 
sory resource. 

The Carnegie Foundation has been working now for 
ten years, but it is not certain that it will not meet 
with serious difficulties. It seems that the pensions 
asked for require, and especially will require, an amount 
greater than the provisions. The managers of the 
Foundation announce today that the pension can be 
morally claimed only by professors whose forces have 
become enfeebled, against which protests are raised 
justified by the promises made. Mr. Cattell had already 
in 1909 formulated certain serious objections and ex- 
pressed the opinion that the intervention of an individ- 
ual should not excuse the institutions themselves from 
assuring the lot of their staff. The Foundation should 



64 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

improve on what the universities should have done, 
following their strict duty, by completing, for example 
up to the total of the salary, the fraction which the uni- 
versity had provided. According to him, the defect of 
the system is, that it has its maximum of efficacy in the 
cases in which the Foundation was the least necessary. 
On the other hand he fears that its existence will con- 
tribute to cause the resignation of professors against 
their will, a procedure which the university could not 
previously have brought to pass. This is not the place 
to discuss this question fully. But it seemed to me in- 
teresting to note its elements, especially because the 
conditions laid down are so far from our bureaucratic 
customs. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE STUDENTS AND THE INSTRUCTION 

The classical college (undergraduate). Admission. Organization of studies. 
Departments. Coordination of courses. Examinations and graduation. 
College life. Social and collective life. The dormitories. Clubs and fraterni- 
ties. Sports and athletics. Various associations, dramatic societies. The 
general results of coUege studies. 

AFTER the administration and the professors, the stu- 
^ dents. With regard to them, we must take up one 
by one each of the parts which we have distinguished in 
the university: in the first place, the college. We have 
seen that it is the fundamental part, historically and 
actually. Many institutions are limited to the college 
alone; in most of the large universities it is numerically 
the predominant part. Of 5000 Harvard students, 
3000 belong to the college. It is the college which still 
impresses on the university its characteristic traits. It 
is more or less distinct; in recent institutions it may 
not perhaps exist explicitly, yet its spirit persists and 
is on the whole constant. I will try to give an idea of it, 
especially as it is at Harvard, where I was able to ob- 
serve it de visu. 

And first, how is the college recruited? 

The student enters college at about the age of eight- 
een years, after leaving the high school, or the secondary 
school where he has remained, usually four years, from 
the age of fourteen to eighteen. Normally studies con- 
tinue four years, and the student is called successively 
freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. As has already 
been said, he enters with an intellectual training little 

85 



66 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

advanced, and a not very homogeneous stock of knowl- 
edge. In fact, the elective system which had been in- 
troduced into the college has been carried over into 
secondary instruction in large measure. Each one 
tends to take secondary studies as suits his tastes, or 
rather, his whim. That is, perhaps, a general aspect of 
contemporary American mentality, in matters of edu- 
cation, and is certainly connected with the prosperity 
and absolute safety of this people, as well as with the 
ease with which it has been able hitherto to move over 
an immense territory of virgin riches. They try to com- 
pel the child as little as possible, to present life to it 
under its most smiling form, to spare it opposition, to 
make work appear to it under the form of pleasure 
rather than of duty. This is very striking, even though 
one lives only a little in the intimacy of a family. By 
virtue of this tendency, they treat the schoolboy too 
much like a student, to the detriment of healthy intel- 
lectual discipline. So he often arrives, after leaving the 
high school, with considerable deficiencies even in the 
knowledge of English. 

A certain number of colleges admit students on mere 
presentation of high school certificates, which show 
that they have followed a regular course of secondary 
studies, and enumerate the subjects they have studied. 
Sometimes this certificate is only recognized when com- 
ing from qualified high schools, that is, from those on 
a special list, kept to date, according to results which 
freshmen of preceding years produce, and which permit 
them to estimate the schools from which they come. 
But many large universities, especially in the East, 
and this is the case with Harvard, admit their students 
only after a special entrance examination, which they 



UNIVERSITIES 67 

arrange for each year, and which comprehends obhga- 
tory subjects and optional subjects.^ Thus every 
freshman enters with a certain speciaHzation, and a 
record is kept of his previous studies. ^ 

Thus Harvard receives at present 600 or 700 freshmen 
a year. They constitute a class, which is designated by 
the year of graduation, that is, of the year when it will 
be the senior class. The freshmen who entered in 1913, 
for example, form the class of '17. Outside of these 
regular students, there are some who are admitted on 
exceptional conditions, and are called special students, 
or out-of -course, or unclassified. 

The university lectures are not public. Only the regu- 
lar students, specially enrolled in each of them, are 
admitted. 

Harvard draws its students from very varied social 
classes, and from all over the United States. The uni- 
versity consciously makes an effort to be a unifying 
factor in the country. 

We have brought the student to college : how are his 
studies regulated.? He is in a general way much guided 
and much watched. Each one decides at the beginning 
the program of studies he will choose, following the 
elective principle, under the direction of a professor ^ 

1 Here is one of the combinations of subjects: 1, English, 2, Latin (or 
French or German or Spanish), 3, elementary mathematics (or physics or 
chemistry), 4, a fourth subject taken from those in the first three groups 
which had not been 'chosen. 

2 The students entering with part of their studies finished, coming from 
another coUege, are admitted with credit for the studies already completed 
by them, and for the time which they have devoted to them. The various 
studies are carefully scaled in value during the four years, and each study 
has a definite value. 

3 At Harvard each professor takes charge of four students each year. 
For them it is a chance, from the beginning of their course, to form friendly 
relations with him. 



68 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

designated by a permanent Committee on the Choice 
of Electives. Thus a plan of studies is traced for him, 
adapted to the career which he counts on undertaking. 
During the first two years, certain subjects are obhga- 
tory, Hke EngHsh composition, and a minimum number 
of courses must belong to the same group of studies. 
It is easy to see that this system may be a burden for 
the professors, whom it obliges, outside of their lectures, 
to do very considerable administrative work, in guiding 
and following the students. 

The courses of instruction are extremely numerous 
and all those which relate to one science or to a group 
of related sciences, constitute a department. Each de- 
partment has either a head, who regulates all the in- 
struction within it, or, in more democratic fashion, 
which is that of Harvard, a chairman, a sort of president- 
secretary, charged simply with the coordination of the 
work, and with the relations between the department 
and the central organs of the university. 

These departments, which are enumerated here, are 
divided at Harvard into four large groups: 

1. Languages, Fine Arts, and Music: Semitic Lan- 
guages and History, Indie Philology, Classical Lan- 
guages, English, Germanic Languages and Literatures, 
French and Romance Languages and Literatures^ 
Comparative Literature, Fine Arts, Music. In addi- 
tion, Egyptology, Slavic languages. 

2. Natural Sciences: Physics, Chemistry, Engineer- 
ing Sciences, Botany, Zoology, Geology and Geography, 
Mineralogy and Petrography, Astronomy, Hygiene and 
Public Health, History of Sciences. 

3. History and Social and Political Sciences : History 
(with numerous subdivisions), Government (Constitu- 



UNIVERSITIES 69 

tions, General Legislation, International Law and 
Diplomacy), Economic Sciences, Education, Anthro- 
pology. 

4. Philosophy and Mathematics; Philosophy and 
Psychology, Social Ethics, Mathematics. ^ 

You see what a variety of subjects the college carries. 
It aims to furnish the possibility of complete general 
culture, including even the general parts of law and of 
the economic sciences. It must be added that in every 
department the courses are very numerous. As ex- 
amples, I note in the Harvard catalogue for 1915-16, 
27 distinct courses in the division of Semitic Languages, 
6 in Egyptology, 22 in French, 9 in Italian, 8 in Spanish, 
4 in Celtic, 8 in Slavic Languages, about thirty in Com- 
parative Literature, 22 courses in Physics, more than 
30 in Chemistry, 16 in Zoology, about twenty courses 
in Pedagogy (Education), 14 in Anthropology, divided 
over a cycle of two years. The variety is no less, if one 
opens the Register of the University of Ohio or Colum- 
bia, or of Cornell. At Cornell, where Entomology has 
had a very great development, in view of its applica- 
tions to agriculture, it is represented by more than 20 
courses. 2 

These courses are of different levels. At Harvard each 
one is classified by one of the three following character- 
izations: 1. Primarily for undergraduates, these are the 
fundamental and elementary courses; 2. For under- 
graduates and graduates, these are higher courses to 

^ This enumeration characterizes an institution very much impregnated 
with the classical education. In the state universities, of a much more nar- 
rowly utilitarian spirit, the classics hold, in a general way, a lesser place, and 
on the contrary, practical teaching, so-called, has a more or less preponderant 
place. 

2 See P. Marchal, loc. cit, p. 264. 



70 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

which students are not admitted until they have taken 
the corresponding elementary courses; 3. Primarily for 
graduates, these are advanced and specialized courses, 
intended especially for graduates, to which college 
students may be admitted in their last years, if they 
have the necessary knowledge. 

Such a system lends itself to an almost unlimited 
diversification of studies. Most of these are half-year 
courses, 1 and comprehend two or three lessons, of an 
hour, or more exactly, fifty-three minutes, a week. In ex- 
perimental sciences, one lesson is generally transformed 
into a laboratory period. Each course forms a class, in 
which assiduity is controlled; the work is watched. 
At the end of the half-year the student undergoes a 
written examination on each course, in which he usually 
answers ten questions. This number of questions tests 
him on the various parts of the course, but in a rather 
superficial fashion. 

To obtain the Bachelor's degree, the student must 
pass in a satisfactory manner thirty-two examinations of 
this kind, spread over four years, or eight half-years. 
That leads him to take normally four courses a half- 
year. 

It is thus clear what the college student's system of 
studies is during the four years which he spends there. 
The extreme flexibility of it must be remembered. Each 
one can push his studies in the direction which interests 
him. As for the value of the result, it depends on the 
ardor of the student in his work. We must have no 

1 The first half-year opens in the last week of September and lasts till 
the end of January; the second goes from February to about the beginning 
of June. The academic year ends between June 20 and June 25 with the 
Commencement festivities. 



UNIVERSITIES 71 

illusions about it; with the average, it is not very great. 
Studies are only one of the elements of college life, and 
for many they are not the chief element. Good scholars 
are not the glory of their class. The very diversity of 
studies tends to render them somewhat superficial. The 
Harvard studies and Bachelor's degree, under these 
conditions, are something hybrid between our studies in 
the lycee and our Faculties of Letters, or of Sciences, or 
of Law, put together. An A.B. graduate means more 
than one of our bacheliers. His age of twenty-two years 
gives him more maturity. There has been a character 
of freedom in his studies which is perhaps the true ele- 
ment of higher education. He has thus been able to 
push them in one direction, in which he will have ac- 
quired very profound knowledge. ^ To sum it up, the 
results will vary enormously according to individuals. 
They may be excellent. 

What is true of Harvard is true of the other univer- 
sities. The Harvard Bachelor's degree is undoubtedly 
among the best. Those of the 600 universities and col- 
leges spread over a long scale of values. In a general 
way, what seems to be the greatest fault is the lack of 
solid training of the mind by secondary teaching. As 
Mr. Woodrow Wilson said, we must not confound edu- 
cation and information. In the American system, there 

^ Thus I had occasion to see, at Harvard, some very good students of 
biology. They had brought a taste for it to the university, and from their 
college years had been able to develop it. The biological sciences are among 
those for which the conditions are better in America than in France. Natural 
history has a rather large place in secondary and even primary instruction, 
and above all, it is taught by keeping closer contact with nature. Besides, 
natm-e is much richer and less deformed by civilization, even in the out- 
skirts of many cities. The liking for excursions and camping is also a factor 
which opens up these callings in youth. 



72 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

is, from the intellectual point of view, too much infor- 
mation and too little education. 



One would have only a very incomplete idea of the 
American college or university if one looked at it from 
the purely intellectual point of view. The life, properly 
speaking, of the student, especially its social aspect, is 
an essential element of it, not only in the psychology of 
the student, but in the thought of many educators. 
The freshman is still a boy; the task of the college is 
to make a man of him. The training of character has 
an importance of the first order. It is a question of 
learning, while living and learning to live. Our purely 
intellectual university environment seems inhuman to 
the Americans, according to the very expression of Mr. 
Barrett Wendell, who has nevertheless seen it with so 
much sympathy. "The object of the college," said Mr. 
Lowell in 1909, on assuming the presidency of Harvard, 
**is not to produce hermits, each imprisoned in his in- 
tellectual cell, but men, adapted to take their place in 
the community, and to live with their fellow- workers." 
He says further, "The college produces liberty of 
thought, breadth of views, training of the civic spirit." 
This, more than a high intellectual training, is the im- 
press which it leaves on the majority of its students. 

This education is based on the life in common and 
the development of sociability. In the old semi- 
ecclesiastical college, the life and the studies were com- 
mon to all. The spirit of the Enghsh colleges of Oxford 
and Cambridge, with the production of the English 
gentleman as its ideal, was continued. The diversifica- 
tion of studies and the multiplication of the number of 
the students have destroyed this unity. Many uni- 



UNIVERSITIES 73 

versities, and Harvard in particular, nevertheless force 
themselves to maintain it. With this intention. Har- 
vard has built, in these last years, along the Charles 
River, four large dormitories, in which the students live. 
Each man has his individual room or apartment, or 
groups of two, three, or four share an apartment, giving 
to all the bathroom, which seems a luxury to us.^ A 
refectory brings together all the youths in each one of 
these buildings, and in a large and comfortable hall 
they can live together in leisure hours, read papers and 
magazines and play music. From their entrance into 
the university, they are thus turned away from the 
solitary and individualized life which is that of our 
student youth, and are led toward a different psychol- 
ogy. A few older students, the proctors, are invested 
with a certain authority and charged with maintaining 
order and good behavior. 

In the following years, a part of the students still 
live in dormitories. Others live in groups in houses, 

* It seems interesting to me to give an idea of the student's budget. The 
tuition is $200 a year, for the lectures, to which must be added laboratory 
fees, for each course in the experimental sciences ($2 to $5 or $10 a half- 
year course). The state universities admit free, so far as tuition is concerned, 
students of the state to which they belong; and others at a very low tuition. 

Rooms in the Harvard dormitories range from $30 to $350 for the aca- 
demic year, according to luxury. The student can board in the university 
dining halls for from $5 or $6 a week up. The university has organized co- 
operative societies, where the students can buy their books and all sorts of 
merchandise very advantageously. 

The expenses of a student for the nine months of the academic year seem 
to be at least $600. 

At Harvard, there are about 300 scholarships for the college, whose value 
ranges from $75 to $300. About twenty, however, are higher than this 
figure, and one even reaches $700. They are given for merit. In the univer- 
sities, moreover, it is not rare for students to accept, in order to pay their 
expenses, jobs which among us would be considered servile, but which in 
America do not lower them at all in the minds of their comrades. 



74 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

each being under the responsibihty of a proctor. For 
the latter class of students, a great club, the Harvard 
Union, formed a comfortable place in which to rest and 
lead club life. The large dining hall or Memorial Hall, 
furnishes board in common at favorable rates. 

In many universities where the common life is less 
well organized than at Harvard, there are numerous 
student societies or clubs, which, it must be said, often 
have an exaggerated character of luxury or of snobbish- 
ness, but which are yet a manifestation of collective 
life. Certain of these societies, which they call fraterni- 
ties, give themselves secret charms in their initiation 
ceremonies, and in their password, and are generally 
designated by Greek letters, standing for a mysterious 
motto, such as AXP, AA$, ATA, <I>A, etc. The same 
society is represented in many universities by affiliated 
chapters.^ 

Another very important aspect of college life, which 
is connected with social life and with the training and 
character of the man, is the practice of physical exer- 
cise, athletics and sports. Athletics hold an enormous 
place, take up much time, and are in general encouraged. 
A vast gymnasium, often with a large swimming pool, 
an enormous stadium, a complete equipment for boat- 
ing, are essential parts of every American university. 
In the psychology of the students, to belong to the 
football eleven, or the baseball nine, or the crews, or on 
a less elevated level, the tennis team, in inter-university 
competitions, is a title of glory very superior to the 

^ These fraternities must not be confounded with two societies of former 
students, spread all over America and having quite different tendencies, 
#BK (*tXoo-o0ia Blov KvlSepvrjTrjs) which has existed for a century, admits, 
on leaving college, students who have been particularly brilliant in literary 
studies, SS (SttouSw;' "Ewoves) those who are dedicated to scientific research. 



UNIVERSITIES 75 

winning of honors of the Bachelor's degree. The boat 
races between Harvard and Yale on the Thames at 
New London, at the end of the academic year, are one 
of the great events of the year, like the match between 
Oxford and Cambridge. This is also the kind of glory 
which lives the longest in the memory of the alumni. 
A university easily finds very considerable sums to 
build or enlarge a stadium, to which thousands of 
spectators come to watch the matches between uni- 
versities. Many serious minds see an undoubted abuse 
in the development of these matches. However, the 
practice of sports helps to give American youth an ele- 
gance of body and a physical vigor which one cannot 
but envy. It is encouraged as an effectual counter to 
sensual suggestions. Finally, in a general way, it ac- 
customs them to discipline, and to team play, for later 
life. A mind as positive as F. W. Taylor, ^ who criti- 
cizes very severely the too great part of whim in all 
American education, and who opposes it to the essen- 
tial condition of success in life — to do each day as 
well as possible what presents itself and not what pleases 
— considers athletics and games "one of the most use- 
ful elements of college life, and that for two reasons: 
1, because they are practised with profound earnest- 
ness; 2, because they put in play not the idea of each 
acting at his own caprice, but of working together and 
of practising this cooperation in a manner like that 
which real life will demand." ^ "Is not the greatest 

1 Science, November 9, 1906. 

2 "True cooperation, cooperation upon the broadest scale, is a feature 
which distinguishes our present commercial and industrial development from 
that of one hundred years ago. Not the cooperation taught by too many of 
our trades-unions which are misguided, and which resembles the cooperation 
of a train of freight cars, but rather that of a well-organized manufacturing 



76 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

problem in university life," he adds, "how to animate 
the students . . . with an earnest, logical purpose?*' 

The sociability of college life is expressed, finally, in 
the innumerable group or clubs which are formed. 
Students interested in the study of French at Harvard 
— and elsewhere — have formed a Cercle frangais. I 
was pleasantly received there. With the aid of Rad- 
cliffe college students, this Cercle gives each year per- 
formances of French plays, of course in French. At the 
Copley Theatre in Boston I saw this troupe of students 
play, for the benefit of our blind soldiers, Edgard et sa 
bonne, by Labiche, and a quite modern play of actual 
interest, Servir, by M. Lavedan. There is likewise a 
Germanic society, and very numerous debating socie- 
ties, in which the young men practise public argument. 

The taste for the theatre is very much alive, particu- 
larly at Harvard, where the professor of dramatic lit- 
erature, Mr. G. P. Baker, instead of limiting himself to 
lectures ex cathedra, has his Harvard and Radcliffe stu- 
dents write plays which are then performed before the 
university families, on the little Radcliffe stage, while 
waiting for the generosity of alumni to make the build- 
ing of a real theatre possible. Thus every year the 
department of dramatic literature, which is called the 
47 Workshop, gives a few performances of unpublished 
plays, and guests are urgently asked to formulate on 
the spot their remarks and criticisms. 

The press of a university like Harvard is another 
manifestation of social life. The students edit three or 
four papers, more or less satirical. Harvard Crimson 

establishment, which is typified by the cobperation of the various parts of 
a watch, each member of which performs and is supreme in its own function, 
and yet is controlled by and must work harmoniously with many others." 



UNIVERSITIES 77 

(daily), Harvard Lampoon, etc. In every way, one feels 
the taste for collective activity. " 

On the whole, college life, by its relative luxury, by 
the spirit which predominates and by its traditions, 
without being aristocratic, nevertheless suits especially 
rich youth, who do not bring to it an ardent desire for 
study. The greatest individualities rarely come out of 
the college. They are generally self-made men. That 
is the case with Graham Bell, the inventor of the tele- 
phone, Edison, and most of the great captains of indus- 
try, like Carnegie or Rockefeller. Many young men 
go to college because their parents went there, because 
their families think they will form agreeable and useful 
relations there, finally and above all because young 
men are known to pass pleasant lives there. With its 
good qualities and its defects, the college forms a social 
elite, especially from the general point of view of cul- 
ture. All factors combined, it produces the dominating 
personalities in most careers, and passing through col- 
lege appears a weighty element to ensure success in life. 
This consideration of success holds a very large place 
in American psychology. One sees it expressed at every 
moment in the addresses of educators. Leland Stanford 
University itself depicts its goal as being " to fit young 
persons for success in life." Between the universities 
and colleges, all aspiring to grow, there is a very lively 
competition, and each tries to persuade the public that 
the sacrifices endured for the education which it gives, 
are a good investment for the future. 

The judgment on the American college is therefore 
necessarily complex. It is not an institution of a purely 
intellectual order, nor fully answering our conception 



78 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

of higher education. From this point of view one may 
criticize it very severely, as does Mr. J. McK. Cattell: ^ 
"Students who complete the work of the high school at 
the age of eighteen can not to advantage spend the four 
subsequent years in a country club, where what time 
can be spared from athletics and social enjoyments may 
be given to studies that are irrelevant to their work in 
life. Such a system may be proper for a hereditary 
aristocracy of wealth, but it no longer obtains even in 
Great Britain, where Oxford and Cambridge are being 
transformed into professional universities." But on 
the other hand, it is not that austere abstraction, sep- 
arated from life properly so-called, and built out of 
whole cloth by the state, without habits of active col- 
laboration, without any spontaneous and cordial partic- 
ipation on the part of the public, such as are our 
Faculties. A throng of lively youth animates the cam- 
pus and is sincerely attached to it. They carry away 
from it pleasant memories, oftener than the solid bag- 
gage of a scholar. Is it necessary that there should be 
in it an enormous number of strong scholars? Besides, 
the system does not at all shut out their production, 
any more than the development of strong scientific in- 
dividualities. One may reproach it especially with be- 
ing, in spite of the correctives which are appHed to it, 
too much for the use of the wealthy classes, and with 
furnishing, for the average case, a culture not suffici- 
ently deep to be fertile. That is moreover the pro- 
found cause of the college crisis of which I have already 
spoken, and which the examination of the other parts 
of the university will make more definite. 

1 Science, September 20, 1907. 



CHAPTER VII 

YOUNG WOMEN AND THE COLLEGE 

Prevalence of coeducation in the western universities. Its still exceptional 
character in the eastern. Women's colleges. Parallelism of studies. Social 
results. Education and the race problem. 

IN the preceding chapter it was a question of men 
students only of the college. But beside them we 
cannot ignore the women students, who are not in any 
degree a rare or exceptional phenomenon. 

The colleges and universities contain in all, a large 
and rapidly increasing number of women. In 1889-90, 
there were 20,874 women, 38,900 in 1900-01; 77,120 
in 1913-14. In the last quarter-century the number of 
women taking advanced studies has therefore more than 
trebled; and it is more than half the number of men. 

In the cultivated class in moderately easy circum- 
stances in the East, young women frequently pass 
through college, from the age of eighteen to twenty-two, 
like the young men, and take entirely parallel studies. 
The American woman, on this social level, has, on the 
whole, a more solid general culture than the man, be- 
cause she takes these studies more in the true spirit of 
culture, and not as a means of entering as rapidly as 
possible into the struggle for a living. And it is women 
like Miss Carey Thomas,^ president of Bryn Mawr Col- 
lege, who, in the evolution of the college, prove the 
staunchest defenders of its classical tradition, sapped 
by modern necessities. 

1 See notably Congress of Arts and Sciences, Universal Exposition, St. 
Louis, Vol. VIII, pp. 133 ff. 

79 



80 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

In a general way, the American woman, at the pres- 
ent hour, is much more emancipated from the mascu- 
line tutelage than the European woman, and that is 
evidently related to her education. She lives much 
more without help. The conditions of material life and 
of marriage have driven her, more than in Europe, to 
make sure of her own existence. She is found in a num- 
ber of professions — those in which one meets her in 
Europe — and in others also, where among us her 
presence is at least exceptional. And we are astonished, 
on returning to France, that in our offices, in our libra- 
ries, our secretaryships to the faculties, our secondary 
teaching and in our administrations in general, she has 
not a much larger place. But the war is going to cause 
us to take a gigantic step in this direction. Men will 
have to be reserved for jobs where their strength rend- 
ers them indispensable. The too numerous women will 
supply their places where men are not necessary. 

In America, woman already has a large place as a 
citizen. She has all the political rights in most of the 
western states, and even in the Middle West; and they 
told me in California that, the experiment having been 
made, those who had been her adversaries on this 
ground, would make much less opposition for her today. 
The electoral influence of women has been beneficent, 
especially in municipal questions, where they have car- 
ried on a severe struggle against graft. In 1916, for the 
first time, a woman was elected to Congress at Wash- 
ington by the state of Montana. She did not master 
her nerves there, it is true, as one could see at the time 
of the vote for the war. 

To limit ourselves here to the universities and col- 
leges, the first fact to set down is that of coeducation. 



UNIVERSITIES 81 

All the universities of the West practice it, and the 
women in the college are often as numerous ^ as the 
men. The prevalence of coeducation is explained by 
historical reasons. During the period of peopling the 
West, the lack of teachers, the small density of popula- 
tion, the great distances, imposed this organization, 
which is, besides, much more economical. It was quite 
naturally extended to higher education, when the uni- 
versities and colleges were created in these regions. 
The oldest coeducational college is Oberlin College, in 
Ohio, which has used this system since its foundation 
in 1833. 

In all of the 569 colleges and universities in the Re- 
port of the Commissioner of Education for 1913-14, 
333, or more than half, are coeducational. The 236 
others comprise 61 Catholic institutions, 55 for men and 
6 for women; and 165 non- Catholic, 89 for men and 
86 for women: of these latter only 36 are indicated as 
non-sectarian. 

In the East, the Puritan tradition has evidently been 
opposed to coeducation. Yet many large institutions 
there are mixed. Such is the case at Cornell University 
(3,731 men, 463 women in 1913-14 in the college), at 
the University of Pennsylvania (2,226 men, 613 women), 
at New York University (3,019 men, 362 women), at 
Boston University (544 men, 613 women), and at 
Brown University at Providence (678 men, 203 wo- 
men), and at very many other institutions (Tufts Col- 
lege, University of Rochester, Syracuse, Maine, etc.). 

*■ Men Women 

University of California 2,801 1,782 

" Minnesota 1,644 1.165 

" Wisconsin 2,865 1,124 

" Chicago 2,020 3,426 

Northwestern University 673 636 



82 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

Many large and old eastern universities have re- 
mained for men only, like Harvard, Yale, Columbia, 
Princeton, as well as Johns Hopkins, at least in the 
college, for Harvard and Columbia admit women grad- 
uate students.^ 

On the other hand, affiliated women's colleges, 
(Radcliffe, Barnard), have been organized near Har- 
vard, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins, having the same 
teaching staff as these universities. This situation is not 
very far from coeducation, and in fact Harvard and 
Radcliffe students organized certain things in common, 
as for example the 47 Workshop which was considered 
above. 

Among the 92 existing women's colleges, the best 
known are the following: 









No of 


Volumes 




Name 


Location 


Founded 


Students 


in 
Library 


Endowment 


Bryu Mawr 


Bryn Mawr, Pa. 


1885 


467 


75,000 


$1,885,000 


Smith 


Northampton, Mass. 


1875 


1,549 


52,000 


1,790,000 


Wellesley 


Wellesley, Mass. 


1873 


1,480 


80,000 


2,056,000 


Mt. Holyoke 


So. Hadley, Mass. 


1837 


772 




1,425,000 


Vassar 


Poughkeepsie, N, Y. 


1865 


1,077 


85,000 


1,520,000 


Radcliffe 


Cambridge, Mass. 


1879 


582 


32,000 


1,025,000 


Barnard 


New York City 


1889 


684 


8,000 


1,420,000 


Hunter 


New York City 


1870 


2,156 


19,000 


Municipal 



Bryn Mawr is not only a college, but also has gradu- 
ate students doing original research, and has furnished 
49 doctorates, between 1898 and 1913. This college has 
numbered among its professors, at least in biology, 

1 Harvard does not admit women to its Medical School, contrary to Johns 
Hopkins. Columbia is an institution for men, but Teachers' College which 
merged with it, is coeducational (372 men, 1,431 women in 1913-14). 



UNIVERSITIES 83 

many of the most notable scientists of today: E. B. 
Wilson, T. H. Morgan, J. Loeb, etc. The other colleges 
have scarcely more than undergraduates. 

The teaching in these colleges is moulded after that 
of the men's universities. Their studies last four years 
and end in a similar graduation. 

From the point of view of studies, the American girl 
has the reputation of being more industrious than the 
average boy. She is much less absorbed by athletics 
and other pleasures. In the coeducational universities 
she has in consequence, very fine scholastic success, 
which does not altogether fail to excite masculine jeal- 
ousy. It even happens, it seems, that the success and 
too large numbers of girls turn men away from certain 
subjects, especially in the literary departments. 

But studies do not quite sufl&ce to give a picture of 
college life for women. In the exclusively women's 
colleges this life naturally has the most character. ^ I 
had a chance to visit only Wellesley College, near 
Boston. Its equipment is magnificent. The college is 
an immense park, of more than 400 acres, in a charming 
site, with a beautiful lake bordered by wooded hills. 
Over this great domain the college buildings are scat- 
tered laboratories, an observatory, a chapel, a building 
for the fine arts, another for music, professors' houses, 
and beautiful buildings where the young women live. 
The main building, which has just been rebuilt after a 
fire, is truly sumptuous. We have no idea in France of 
establishments of such luxuriousness. If we add that, 
in these colleges, the young women enjoy a very large 
liberty, that they have organized a common life anal- 

^ In the mixed universities the young women of course have their special 
dormitories or residential colleges. 



84 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

ogous to that of the men, sometimes with clubs and 
sororities (parallel to the fraternities), one conceives 
without difficulty that the years in college are for them 
also a "good time," and that they have no apprehen- 
sions in devoting to it four years of their youth. 

But we must ask also what are the results from the 
social point of view. A not negligible proportion of 
the young women who study in the colleges are des- 
tined for teaching. This proportion is even strong in 
some colleges, as at Bryn Mawr. But the majority of 
the 77,000 women students are scattered among vari- 
ous careers, or simply wait for marriage. Passing 
through college has largely emancipated the American 
woman. She is cultivated; she has a free mind; she 
interests herself willingly in very varied things; in 
particular in problems of public usefulness, often in a 
somewhat fearsome manner. Yet one cannot help 
thinking that the life which they have led,^ during the 
period of their studies, has tended to develop in them 
luxurious tastes which in many cases oppose a serious 
obstacle to family life. 

Besides, that is a question for all American society, 
and especially that of the East, to solve. The birth- 
rate there is very small, much less than in France, on 
which subject the Americans are often alarmed, with- 
out always taking account that their case is much worse, 
but that immigration has up till now furnished them 
wherewith to fill the vacancies. In Massachusetts from 
1877 to 1891, the recent immigrants have furnished an 
excess of births over deaths equal to 526,987 individ- 

^ The minimum expenses of a Wellesley student are about equivalent to 
those of a Harvard student. 



UNIVERSITIES 



85 



uals, while the native population showed, during the 
same period, an excess of deaths over births equal to 
269,918. The American population of ancient source, 
depositary of English civilization and Puritan tradition, 
is thus threatened with rapid disappearance. This 
sterility is evidently voluntary, at least in general, and 
the general comfort of living and the economic exigen- 
cies which that entails, are one of the principal causes. 
These causes apply to very varied classes of the popu- 
lation. But the statistics show that the problem is very 
grave, as it concerns the colleges. Students of popula- 
tion and educators are keenly disturbed over it. Col- 
lege education tends to aggravate the evil rather than 
to remedy it. 

Mr. R. S. Sprague,^ professor of social economics at 
the Massachusetts College of Agriculture at Amherst, 
from whom I have borrowed the figures below, de- 
nounces at once the high school and the college. "The 



Date of 
Graduation 


Per cent 

Unmarried 

in 1916 


Per cent 
Married 


Average 
Number of 

Children 

per Married 

Graduate 


Average 
Number of 
Children for 

the Total 
Number of 
Graduates 


1842-49 


14.6 
24.5 
39.1 
40.6 
42.4 
50.0 


85.4 
75.5 
60.9 
59.4 
57.6 
50.0 


2.77 
3.38 
2.64 
2.75 
2.54 
1.91 


2 37 


1850-59 


2 55 


1860-69 


1 60 


1870-79 

1880-89 


1.63 
1 46 


1890-92 2 


0.95 



1 Journal of Heredity, Vol. VI, 1915, p. 159. 

^ The statistics are ended at 1892, in order to take in only women whose 
period of maternity may be considered as ended. 



86 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

high schools," he says, "have turned their backs on the 
family. They prepared our children for the college, for 
the parlor, club, and travel, but did not recognize the 
demands of the workshop, kitchen, and nursery where 
the greater part of the average parent's time and 
energy must be spent." "College education," he says 
again, "gives independent women, but women whose 
individual superiority is acquired at the expense of the 
race. The statistics relative to the number of children 
of former students of the women's colleges are very 
lamentable. For example, there are those of Mount 
Holyoke College, which is the oldest. 

Vassar College furnishes, between 1867 and 1892, 959 
graduates, of whom 509 have married, or 53 per cent, 
and have had 973 children, or about 1 per graduate. 
Of these 959 women, 451, or 45 per cent, have taught; 
among the latter 166 have married, and have had 287 
children, or 1.73 per capita; moreover, 343 graduates, 
who have not taught and who have married, had 686 
children, or 2 on the average. 

Bryn Mawr, which is more recent, being founded in 
1885, cannot furnish comparable statistics for the 
classes 1888 to 1900, 165 graduates, 45 per cent, were 
married on the first of January, 1913, and had had 138 
children, or 0.84 per married graduate, and 0.37 per 
capita, of the total of graduates. These figures may yet 
be improved, but are deplorably small. 

Wellesley, for its classes from 1879 to 1888, furnishes 
55 per cent of marriages among its graduates and 60 
per cent of the total of its students, whether graduates 
or not. These marriages have furnished an average of 
0.86 children per graduate and 0.97 for the total of the 
classes (1.56 per married graduate, and 1.62 for the 



UNIVERSITIES 87 

total of students married) . The statistics for the honor- 
girls give still smaller figures.^ 

The principle of women's colleges has sometimes been 
given as a cause, and the preceding low figures attrib- 
uted, at least in part, to a mentality which the absence 
of coeducation would develop. That would plead for 
the general adoption of the latter, which, besides, is 
more economical. But some statistics quite recently 
published, 2 give for the women coming from Syracuse 
University,^ figures absolutely agreeing with those for 
Wellesley College. 

Wellesley Syracuse 
Average number of children for the total number 

of graduates 0.86 0.88 

Average number of children for each married 

graduate 1.56 1.60 

Therefore coeducation or its absence does not seem 
to be an important factor in the question. Accordingly, 
one can hardly refuse to admit the intellectual develop- 
ment of the American woman and her taste for culture, 

1 The Journal of Heredity, from which these statistics are taken, has 
calculated for thirty years, 1861-90, the average fecundity of graduates 
of Yale and Harvard. The percentage of marriages oscillates between 75 
and 80 per cent, even for recent years. The average number of children per 
family has gone down from 2.24 for the jBrst decade to 1.87 for the last. The 
average number of children, calculated on the total of the graduates, is 1.54. 

2 Journal of Heredity, May, 1917, H. J. Backer, Coeducation and Eu- 
genics. 

^ By comparing statistics of men and women students of Syracuse Uni- 
versity, conditions of the environment being similar, we find: 

Men Women 

Per cent of married graduates 81.0 57.0 

Average age of marriage 28.8 27.7 

Per cent of marriages between students of the university 3.46 2.06 

Per cent of sterile marriages 20.0 28.0 

Per cent of marriages with two children 45.0 42.0 

Average number of children to each family 2.06 1.46 

Average number of children to each graduate . 1.66 0.83 



88 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

but she has been led into a very strong individuaHsm 
and turned away from the prosaic reaHties of life. The 
general wealth and perfection of material life have 
also had in their own way a considerable effect. Mr. 
Sprague says energetically, but with reason, "Women 
are the capital of the race. The farmer who employs 
his land as a golf course or a hunting preserve, instead 
of cultivating it, is surely going to ruin. Likewise a 
civilization which employs its women as stenographers, 
clerks and professors, instead of making mothers of 
them, is running to the ruin of the race." 

In what specially concerns the marriage of women 
college graduates, the law of supply and demand seems 
to work against them.^ "They are not prepared psy- 
chologically or technically for the occupations of family 
life, and seek these only under special conditions, which 
drive many men away from them." ^ 

The movement which leads women toward a high 
intellectual culture is not evil in itself, but it ought to 
have important correctives, in the teaching given, so 
as to restore to its true place, which should be the first, 
the role of woman as wife and mother.' Superior in- 

1 Mr. McK. Cattell gives the following statistics: American men of 
science who have married women graduates have had on the average 2.02 
children; those who have married women who have gone to college, but 
not graduates, have had 2.12, and those whose wives have not been to col- 
lege have had 2.32. Many intelligent men prefer young women whose edu- 
cation has turned them toward the realities of life; and that is one of the 
chief causes of the lowering of the percentage of marriages among women 
college graduates. 

2 Sprague, loc. cit. 

3 According to R. K. Johnson and R. Stutzman, Journal of Heredity, 
1915, the women's colleges offer an obstinate resistance to introducing 
into their programs domestic education, and especially anything which 
concerns the care to be given to childhood. 



UNIVERSITIES 89 

dividuals only — and they are naturally very rare — 
can pretend that they are exempt from this law, and 
the highest virtue of a woman, even an educated one, 
is still to make sure the future of the race. That is what 
Napoleon I curtly replied to a question by Mme. de 
Stael, in the name of good sense, which never loses its 
rights. 



CHAPTER VIII 

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 

Relations with the college. Development. Degrees. Master of Arts. Doctor 
of Philosophy. The doctorate in the principal universities. 

rr^HE Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is, as we 
^ have seen in Chapter II, a sort of prolongation, 
which has been grafted upon the college, and which is 
the true equivalent of our Faculties of Letters and of 
Sciences. 1 

In general it has not a very well-marked physical 
individuality. Its staff, that is to say its faculty, is 
composed of the same men as that of the college. It 
has only an administrative individuality, indicated by 
a special dean, who manages its business. Its depart- 
ments are those of the college, and as we have seen, are 
not absolutely distinct, at least at Harvard, and at 
many universities. Certain courses are for graduates 
and undergraduates, and others primarily for graduates. 
In certain universities, however, the distinction is better 
marked. That is the case at the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, and especially at Johns Hopkins, which is prop- 
erly speaking exclusively a graduate school, the college 
which is its satellite being quite distinct. At Bryn Mawr 
the arrangements are parallel to those at Johns Hopkins. 

^ The two groups of studies are in general united, as the term Arts and 
Sciences moreover indicates. Sometimes, however, there are two distinct 
organizations. That is the case at the University of Chicago, which has a 
Graduate School of Arts and Literature, on the one hand, and on the other 
hand, the Ogden School of Sciences. 



UNIVERSITIES 91 

Clark University at Worcester is also a pure graduate 
school, which now has a college connected with it. 

By virtue of this organization, the graduate school is 
not in general of a radically different character from 
that of the college. The courses primarily for graduates 
are only more specialized and presuppose previously 
acquired knowledge. Each department has a smaller 
or larger number of them, and the flexibility of the 
organization in departments permits them easily to 
arrange new courses on the parts of science which have 
just developed. We can give a clear example of it for 
biology. Since 1900 a special branch of this science has 
been constituted, which has its origin in the already 
ancient works of Charles Naudin and Gregor Mendel, 
the experimental study of heredity, by way of crossing 
neighboring varieties. This study, whose centre is 
heredity, called Mendelism, has formed the object of 
numerous researches in the last fifteen years, and con- 
stitutes today what is called genetics. Genetics is 
abundantly taught in the large American universities, 
at once in an elementary form for undergraduates, and 
in a more advanced way for graduates. At Harvard 
this instruction is given, on the zoological side, by Pro- 
fessor W. E. Castle, on the botanical side by Professor 
E. M. East. It is likewise represented in all the great 
universities. These last years, genetics was taught in 
51 important establishments, representing 3000 audi- 
tors of these courses; in 15 of them there were 140 
graduates engaged on original researches in this domain. 

While finishing their instruction in the various parts 
of a science or group of sciences, the graduate students 
are under the more special direction of a professor, who 
guides them in their researches, and the graduate school 



92 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

is before all, the collection of laboratories and seminars 
corresponding to the various sciences. It is therefore 
above all a particular aspect of the general activity of 
the college professors. 

It is a recent differentiation, which goes back scarcely 
over fifty years, even in the universities in which it is 
the oldest. The first trace of organization of studies for 
graduates at Yale is proven to be in 1847, and the 
graduate school was definitely established there in 
1872. At Harvard from 1860 there were graduates 
about Louis Agassiz. The doctorate was instituted 
there in 1872. There were 28 graduates in 1872, 111 in 
1889-90.1 There are at present 500 of them. 

The graduate school is well represented in only a 
small number of universities, and one may take for one 
of his criteria, the number of the students who are en- 
rolled in them (in 1913-14). I have set forth the total 
number of the students of the university, so that one 
can get an idea of the relative importance of the gradu- 
ate school in the whole. These figures, however, give 
the total of graduate students, and for certain univer- 
sities, such as Harvard and Chicago, they include organ- 
izations distinct from the Graduate School of Arts and 
Sciences (for example, at Harvard, the Graduate School 
of Business Administration, or advanced school of com- 
mercial studies). (See table on opposite page.) We 
find, besides, 25 institutions which show, from their 
statistics, graduate students varying in number from 
200 to 80. Moreover, in 1913-14, the total of graduates 
given in the Report of the Commissioner of Education, 
was 12,871, of whom 8656 were men and 4215 women. 

1 E. D. Perry, Monograph on Education in the United States, Vol. II, p. 6, 
Exposition, Paris, 1900. 



UNIVERSITIES 



93 



They represent, therefore, numerically almost one- 
twentieth of the total number of American students. 



Universities 



Total No. 
Students 


Total of 
Graduate 
Students 


Men 


7765 


1799 


1081 


5112 


1568 


942 


1803 


681 


362 


4912 


795 


713 


6028 


707 


404 


4719 


480 


343 


5015 


383 


327 


4686 


337 


308 


5520 


298 


230 


5094 


285 


242 


3189 


258 


202 


852 


229 


189 


. 1600 


176 


176 


1906 


224 


168 


4958 


166 


117 



Women 



Chicago 

Columbia 

Columbia Teachers' College 

Harvard 

California 

Wisconsin 

Cornell 

Pennsylvania 

Michigan 

Illinois 

Yale 

Johns Hopkins 

Princeton 

Leland Stanford Jr 

Minnesota 



718 

626 

319 

82 

303 

167 

56 

129 

68 

43 

56 

40 

56 
49 



The work of the graduates is rewarded by two de- 
grees, that of Master and that of Doctor. 

The title Master of Arts, M.A., or Master of Science, 
M.Sc, can be obtained by one year's residence at the 
University, after graduation, during which the candi- 
date works on a program traced out in advance and 
approved, at the time of enrolling, subject to certain 
rules as to extent and variety. The rules vary from one 
university to another. There is not always an examina- 
tion. At the University of Chicago, the candidate must 
write a little dissertation, which is deposited in the 
archives. At Cornell University, they require both an 
examination and a small original work. To sum it up, 
the studies for the degree of master require a certain 



94 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

specialization, with apprenticeship in original work. 
We can consider that a master from a good university 
corresponds approximately to one of our licenci4s es 
sciences, holding a diploma for advanced studies. In 
1913-14, about 4700 Master's degrees were conferred. 

The Doctor's degree. Doctor of Philosophy, Ph.D., or 
Doctor of Science, Sc.D., is generally acquired by three 
years of studies as a graduate, the year for the Master's 
degree being included in these three years. The can- 
didate submits a subject for study to a committee, and 
must write an original thesis. The trials are composed 
specially of an examination on two accessory or minor 
subjects, and on one principal or major subject. The 
thesis is generally printed, though this is not absolutely 
obligatory. The doctorate has been more or less mod- 
eled after the German doctorate; but here it is not the 
normal termination of the studies of all the students. 
It is rarely won with less than seven years' residence at 
the university, at the age of twenty-seven or twenty- 
eight. It seems to me to represent, on the whole, an 
effort rather comparable to that which our doctorate 
in law exacts, the value of the comparison depending on 
the measure in which the two kinds of studies can be 
compared. 

This comparison with our doctorate is, moreover, an 
important and present one. One of the reasons — it is 
not the only one — why the Americans have flocked 
to the German universities so much, is that they can 
there become a Doctor Philosophiae, and bring back this 
degree to America as a certificate for their work. 

No barrier, like our licentiate, drives them away. It 
often happened that they even passed off in Germany 
theses written in America. 



UNIVERSITIES 



95 



Today, when the war is bringing forth a great current 
of sympathy from America toward France, the Ameri- 
cans would Hke us to accord them the same facihty. 
Our state doctorate is practically inaccessible, and 
foreigners understand imperfectly the distinction be- 
tween the two doctorates, one state, the other univer- 
sity. In my opinion, there would be ground, while 
maintaining the state doctorate as it is, for our nation- 
als, to suppress the antecedent condition of the licentiate 
for foreigners, and to accept what would be the equiva- 
lent American degree. ^ 



University 



Number of 
Doctorates 
in 1914-15 


In Science 


Annual 
Average, 
1898-1907 


Total 

Number 

1898-1915 


70 


27 


32.2 


835 


79 


53 


35.6 


780 


58 


33 


33.8 


709 


36 


20 


31.8 


590 


31 


23 


30.5 


536 


34 


11 


22.5 


458 


31 


26 


18.1 


452 


21 


8 


8.6 


258 


12 


10 


8.7 


180 


26 


15 


6.9 


158 


23 


17 


5.0 


122 


22 


16 


3.3 


120 


12 


4 


2.6 


111 


5 


2 


1.4 


47 



In Sciences 



Columbia 

Chicago 

Harvard 

Yale 

Johns Hopkins 
Pennsylvania. . 

Cornell 

Wisconsin. . . . 

Clark 

Michigan 

Dlinois 

California. . . . 
Princeton .... 
Stanford 



329 

414 

296 

267 

324 

177 

317 

108 

162 

76 

81 

89 

49 

32 



* One of our American colleagues, who was a student in the Ecole Normale 
SupSrieure, a little more than twenty years ago, and who has kept a very 
good memory of it, quite recently wrote me these lines, which it seems to me 
interesting to quote here: "In particular it would be very desirable that a 
committee in France should examine the catalogues (of the principal Ameri- 
can Universities) and should learn the conditions exacted for the doctorate 
in America, so that the Sorbonne might offer to American students a doctorate 



96 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

These are the figures relating to the universities 
which are most important for the sciences.^ 

The statistics show that about fifty universities or 
colleges give the Doctor's degree, thirty or thirty-five of 
them in a regular manner.^ In 1914-15, 556 doctorates 
were granted, which is a number double the average of 
the decade 1898-1907. If we wish to consider the 
sciences separately, there are other tables.^ 

Of course we must not exaggerate the value of figures 
in matters such as that which occupies us. The value 
of scientific work is more important than their number. 
The number of doctorates given is one of the tangible 
elements on which the universities count for establish- 
ing their reputation with the public; driven by the 
spirit of mutual rivalry, they may tend to pad this num- 
ber by an excessive indulgence. 

having about the same degree of difficulty as our own. I think that the Doctorat 
d'UniversitS answers this requirement. But unhappily very few Americans 
go to the Sorbonne. As a former student of the Ecole Normale, I wish this 
school could establish a section for foreigners. Besides, I think it would be 
very desirable to organize a centre of information for our students. The 
chief difficulty in coming to study in France is that at the Sorbonne there is no 
suitable machinery to attend to the American students, or in any case, if this 
machinery exists, it is unknown in America. Our students feel more or less 
abandoned when they come to Paris. If they go to Gbttingen or to Berlin, things 
are organized in such a way that they easily find their 'place in the institution and 
get what they want." 

The same requirements are expressed identically in other letters which 
have been sent to me. 

^ New York University, Boston University, and Bryn Mawr, furnish a 
very considerable number of doctors, for the whole of the period, but have 
only a very small importance as regards the sciences. 

2 At Cornell in 1910, there were the following numbers of candidates for 
the doctorate: 53 chemists, 27 botanists, 24 physicists, 19 zoologists, 20 
geologists. 

^ The tables are given in Science, October 22, 1915, pp. 555 flf. 



UNIVERSITIES 



97 



But the figures become more significant when com- 
pared with a past of twenty years. We see how rapid 



Average 
1898-1907 



1914-15 



Total 
1898-1915 



Chemistry. . , 

Physics 

Zoology 

Botany 

Psychology . . 
Mathematics. 

Biology 

Physiology. . 
Agriculture. . 
Astronomy. . 
Bacteriology . 
Anthropology 
Anatomy. . . . 
Paleontology. 
Engineering. . 
Pathology. . . 
Mineralogy. . 
Geography. . , 
Metallurgy. . 
Meteorology . 



32.3 

15.5 

15.2 

12.6 

13.5 

12.1 

7.1 

4.1 

1.0 

3.4 

1.4 

1.0 

0.9 

1.6 

.0.8 

0.5 

0.6 

0.1 

0.3 

0.1 



85 

31 

32 

40 

22 

23 

26 

8 

9 

7 

4 

6 

5 

2 

2 

2 

1 

3 

1 





838 

366 

348 

315 

309 

297 

190 

97 

71 

71 

44 

33 

27 

25 

19 

19 

11 

8 

6 

1 



is the development of the universities, and how it is 
made in all directions. In particular, the state universi- 
ties are rising from the utilitarian level on which they 
began, and tend to take an honorable place beside the 
great private universities of the East. 

The students who are preparing for the doctorate are, 
in a large majority, future college or university profes- 
sors. That comes out with extreme clearness in the 
catalogue of Harvard theses from 1873 to 1916. Almost 
all of these doctors are now teaching or have taught in 
universities or colleges, or are connected with museums 



98 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

or with governmental scientific services. Only those 
young men who wish a scientific or pedagogical career 
push on to the doctorate. 

The social construction of the graduate school is 
therefore quite different from that of the college, as is 
naturally to be expected, and the material importance 
of the role which the college has in the life of the univer- 
sity is understood. 

We will return to the conditions of scientific research 
at the opening of the second part. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS 

First group : Theology, Law, Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy. Second group : 
Schools of Pedagogy, Teacher's College at Columbia, the School of Education 
at Chicago. Schools of Fine Arts. Architecture. Schools of Journalism. 

^I^HE parts of the university which are still to be con- 
^ sidered are called by the Americans professional 
schools, because the teaching in them is preparatory to 
a definite career. I will touch but lightly upon those 
which correspond to our Faculties of Law and of Medi- 
cine, because I do not feel that I am a sufficient au- 
thority, and because they are less interesting to us than 
the others. A large number of professional schools have 
been created in an independent way, and at their 
origin were conceived with a strictly utilitarian end, in 
order to train professional men as rapidly as possible. 
Gradually, they are merging into the universities. 

For medicine and law in particular, it is only quite 
recently and under the impulsion of universities like 
Harvard, Johns Hopkins and some others, that they 
have endeavored to get students having considerable 
preliminary knowledge, by requiring a period of study 
in college before entrance to these schools. 

First Group. Schools of Theology, Law, Medicine, 
AND THE Associated Professions 

First the statistics which show the number of schools ^ 
of these various specialties, as well as the size and 

99 



100 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

quality of their faculties and of their student bodies in 
1913-14.1 



Faculties 


Number 
of Insti- 
tutions 


Number 
of Pro- 
fessors 


Total 

No. of 

Students 


Graduates 


Per Cent 

of 
Graduates 


Women 
Students 


Theology 

Law. . 


176 
122 
100 

72 
50 


1516 
1471 
6955 
744 
1532 


11,269 

20,958 

16,920 

5,930 

9,315 


417 

4215 

2468 

91 

199 


3.7 

20.1 

14.5 

1.5 

2.1 


580 
522 


Medicine 

Pharmacy 

Dental Schools 


835 
280 
185 



1. Schools of Theology 

For theology, I limit myself to showing the figures 
above. 

The state universities have no faculty of theology. 
As for the private universities, one might distinguish 
their faculties of theology by noting whether the in- 
stitution is a church school or undenominational. 



2. Law Schools 

The course of studies in these schools is generally 
three years and leads to a baccalaureate (Bachelor of 
Laws) given, following examinations passed every year. 
There is also a degree of doctor; at Harvard it is obtained 
by a fourth year of study and special examinations. 

^ By way of comparison, the statistics for 1898. 



Faculties 



Number of 
Institutions 


Number of 
Professors 


Total 

Number of 

Students 


165 


1070 


8317 


86 


970 


11,783 


156 


5735 


24,043 


52 


412 


3525 


66 


1513 


7221 



Women 
Students 



Theology 

Law 

Medicine 

Pharmacy. ... 
Dental Schools 



198 

147 

1397 

174 



UNIVERSITIES 



101 



Harvard is the only university which requires all its 
law students to be previously college graduates. The 
University of Chicago requires either the Bachelor's 
degree or three years of effective and satisfactory work 
in a college. It is the same at Columbia. There, how- 
ever, they admit a less precise equivalent, in the form 
of a certificate of satisfactory previous study and in- 
struction, in an advanced American or foreign institu- 
tion. 

Here follow some figures relating to 1913-14, which 
show the proportion of graduates among the law stu- 
dents in various universities. 

You will observe that none of the large universities 
has a very numerous school of law, as one would have 
expected. 



University 


Total Law 
Students 


Number of 
Graduates 


University- 


Total Law 
Students 


Number of 
Graduates 


Harvard 

Chicago 

Columbia 

Cornell 

Pennsylvania . 
Yale 


694 
313 
493 
293 
374 
133 


691 
255 
410 
12 
155 
103 


Stanford 

California. . . . 
Wisconsin. . . . 

Illinois 

Michigan 

Minnesota.. . . 


158 
223 
220 
121 
612 
176 


20 
99 
50 
9 
79 
17 



Law students, at least at Harvard, are known to be 
extremely hard working; the spirit is quite different 
from that of the college. I am not competent to speak 
of the instruction. From what I have been told, its 
character is less doctrinal than practical. 

A certain number of schools, of which some are very 
large (that of Georgetown University at Washington 
has a thousand students), have only evening courses. 



102 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

3. Schools of Medicine 

The teaching of medicine in the United States, until 
a very recent period, was very unsatisfactory, as Ameri- 
cans admit. Physicians lacked general scientific educa- 
tion. "In medicine as in politics," writes Professor 
Howell of Johns Hopkins, "a country finds, on the 
whole, the kind of services which the majority con- 
siders necessary, and progressive men have much diffi- 
culty in leading this majority to change its ideas." 

The first schools were those of Philadelphia (today. 
University of Pennsylvania), and of King's College 
(Columbia), at New York, which go back to the eight- 
eenth century. The Harvard Medical School was 
founded in 1782. 

About thirty schools were organized in the first half 
of the nineteenth century, and a hundred in the second 
half. The great defect of these schools — and it is not 
entirely overcome today — was in not exacting any pre- 
vious general instruction from their students. Many 
schools competed in reducing the difficulties of the 
studies. The very great liberty granted by law to the 
medical profession in the absence of a state examina- 
tion, did not tend to remedy these defects in the training 
of the physician. On the other hand, numerous extra- 
medical systems, real sects, pretending to cure, have 
been very much in favor with the public, and even to- 
day. Christian Science has a great influence even in the 
most cultivated parts of the United States, such as 
Massachusetts. 

Of the 156 schools of medicine existing in 1900, 
82 were still independent of universities. These 156 
3chools are today reduced to 100, of which 10 are home- 



UNIVERSITIES 103 

opathic and 4 eclectic. In certain large cities there are 
several independent medical schools, either attached to 
universities or autonomous. Chicago has no less than 
7, New York (with Brooklyn) 6, Philadelphia, 5, Wash- 
ington, Baltimore, Boston and St. Louis, 3. None of 
these schools is very large. The largest have 600 to 
700 students. Many have only a hundred, and some 
are rudimentary. Oakland College of Medicine, near 
San Francisco, had, in 1913-14, 16 students and 44 
professors, or instructors. Several of the most impor- 
tant universities have no medical school. That is the 
case with Princeton. Yale has only about 50 students 
in its department of medicine, which, however, num- 
bers 57 professors, or instructors. At the University of 
Chicago, there were in 1915-16, 599 students in medi- 
cine (68 of them women), but the university itself has 
no real faculty of medicine. It has organized only the 
scientific part of the medical course (physics, chemis- 
try, physiology, anatomy, pathology), but possesses no 
clinical instruction or hospitals. It has made an agree- 
ment with the Rush Medical College, which is, in fact, 
its school of medicine, but with which it has no official 
connection. The scientific courses of this college have 
been transferred to the University of Chicago, and the 
students of the latter take their strictly medical studies 
in the former. 

The progress realized in the quality of medical 
studies has been due above all to the influence of Johns 
Hopkins and Harvard Universities. Johns Hopkins 
admits only college graduates to its medical school 
proper. Cornell and Yale require three years of college. 
Harvard admits graduates, or students having com- 
pleted at least two years in college, under conditions 



104 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

satisfactory from the scientific point of view. The rule 
which is becoming estabHshed is to require two years 
of college, before the strictly medical studies, which 
themselves last four years. Of the latter, the first two 
are of a more scientific order, and thus form, with the 
two years of college a whole similar to the classical 
Bachelor's degree. 

The following figures ^ show the proportion of grad- 
uates among the medical students in the great uni- 
versities. 



University 


Total 


College 
Graduates 


University- 


Total 


College 
Graduates 


Johns Hopkins . 

Harvard 

Chicago 

Pennsylvania. . 
Columbia 


360 
308 
462 
284 
355 


360 
290 
87 
156 
252 


California. . . . 

Illinois 

Michigan 

Wisconsin. . . . 


124 
351 

288 
83 


25 
26 
94 
11 



The Harvard Medical School, rebuilt in 1907, Bt 
Boston, in the neighborhood of the principal hospitals, 
is magnificently equipped. The medical schools of the 
large universities established in the country or in small 
towns, are generally separated from the rest of the 
university, in order to be placed in a large city. Thus 
the schools of medicine of the universities of Illinois 
(Urbana), and Northwestern (Evanston), are in Chi- 
cago, and that of Cornell University (Ithaca), is in New 
York City. 

^ Women are still excluded from many medical schools (Harvard, Colum- 
bia, Yale, Pennsylvania). They are admitted to that of Johns Hopkins, 
because of a special condition in a legacy. There are a certain number of 
special schools for them. At present I find only one mentioned, at Phila- 
delphia (Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania), with about 100 
students. 



UNIVERSITIES 105 

The duration of the medical studies is at present 
four years. This, for example, is the arrangement of 
subjects at Harvard: 

First year : Anatomy, Histology, Embryology, Phys- 
iology, Biological Chemistry. 

Second year: Bacteriology, Pathology, Prophylaxis 
and Hygiene, Pharmacology, Medicine, Surgery, Neu- 
rology, Dermatology. 

Third year: Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, X-rays, 
Syphilis, Psychiatry, Legal Medicine. 

Fourth year: Numerous scientific or clinical special- 
ties, at the choice of the candidates, and four months as 
clinical clerk in a hospital. 

The degree granted at the end of the studies is that 
of Doctor of Medicine, Harvard also gives that of Doctor 
of Public Health to doctors of medicine who work an 
additional year on a special subject and write a thesis 
embodying original researches.^ Finally, it has super- 
imposed upon its medical school, a Graduate School of 
Medicine, whose work consists of courses and especially 
of original scientific research in the laboratories. It 
has constituted, within it, a special school of tropical 
medicine, which Professor Strong directs. 

To sum up, the teaching of medicine is still in a period 
of great transformation, and throughout the country is 
very heterogeneous. Mr. Howell, of Johns Hopkins, 
thinks that the three chief problems actually under dis- 
cussion are the opportuneness of a third year of clinical 
studies, the better adaptation of clinical professors to 
the scientific method, and the means of getting them 
to devote themselves more to their teaching. 

^ Besides, studies on branches of the medical sciences may be combined 
with college studies and lead to the degree of A.M. or Ph.D. 



106 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

4. Dental Schools 

While the United States remained very backward in 
medical studies, the practice of dentistry — in which 
the mechanical has a very large part — developed to a 
very high degree there. Numerous schools were organ- 
ized, a large number of which are attached to universi- 
ties. There are at present 50, with 9000 students (more 
than half the number of medical students) . The dental 
school is a constituent and sometimes an important part 
of most of the large universities. That of Northwestern 
University numbers, in 1913-14, 615 students (46 pro- 
fessors); that of the University of Pennsylvania, has 
558 students (63 professors); that of Harvard has 193 
students (59 professors) . 

These schools are very well equipped. The length of 
their studies is three years, and beginning with 1917-18, 
will be extended at Harvard and in a certain number of 
other schools which have formed an association to four 
years. At the Harvard dental school the studies of the 
first year, anatomy, histology, physiology, chemistry 
and dental physiology, and general pathology, are all 
taken at the medical school. The degree granted is that 
of Doctor of Dental Medicine. 

5. Schools of Pharmacy 

These schools, at present numbering seventy-two, are 
for the most part, attached to universities, of which they 
form a special college. This college, however, is lacking 
in a certain number of large private universities (Har- 
vard, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania), without 
doubt because the schools of pharmacy existing in their 
respective cities have kept themselves independent. In 



UNIVERSITIES 107 

New York, the College of Pharmacy, formerly distinct, 
has merged with Columbia. 

The instruction in this last named school of pharmacy 
is given in two degrees. In two years of study it trains 
ordinary pharmacists and chemist-pharmacists of the 
university. A third year, open to the graduates from 
the first course, leads to the degree of Doctor of Phar- 
macy, and gives the technical instruction necessary for 
the new work of pharmaceutical laboratories (micro- 
scopic, biological analysis, etc.). 

Second Group. Pedagogy, Architecture and 
Fine Arts, Journalism 

6. Schools of Pedagogy 

The theory and technique of education are a subject 
of study very much in favor in the American universi- 
ties. Almost all have at least a department of education 
in the college, in which the most diverse questions of 
pedagogy and of teaching are methodically studied. At 
Harvard twenty-four courses (for a period of two years) 
are offered in this division, on the general problems of 
education, psychology, history of pedagogy, theoretical 
and practical organization of teaching, in its various 
stages. Certain of these courses include visits to schools 
or even practice in teaching there. Finally, the atten- 
tion of the students is drawn to a list of courses which 
are given in other parts of the university, such as Ameri- 
can institutions, sociology, philosophy and psychology. 

In a certain number of universities, there is a real 
school of pedagogy, more or less independent. The 
largest is that of Columbia, at New York, which bears 
the name of Teachers' College and which, in 1915-16, 



108 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

had 1972 students.^ Teachers' College is an institution 
which was founded independently in 1888, and which 
merged with Columbia in 1\898, while retaining a very 
broad autonomy. This college has its special board of 
trustees. It is, moreover, very heterogeneous. In fact 
it includes two distinct schools. 

One is a school of pedagogy, in the strict sense, for 
the thorough study of psychology, sociology, the history 
and philosophy of education, administration of schools, 
and the various types of instruction (secondary, techni- 
cal, elementary, kindergarten). It is the professional 
institute of pedagogy at Columbia, quite as much as 
the school of mines or of medicine is professional. The 
instruction in it is given in two stages: 1, two years of 
pedagogical instruction, to which students already hav- 
ing had two years in college are admitted, and it grants 
the degree of Bachelor of Science in Education? 2, more 
advanced instruction, a prolongation of the preceding, 
constituting, in brief, a graduate school, and leading to 
the degrees of Master and Doctor in Teaching. This 
advanced instruction brought together, in the last few 
years, about 350 graduates. In 1911-12 672 students 
of Teachers' College have been appointed to various 
teaching positions, 110 of them in colleges or uni- 
versities. 

The other school comprised in Teachers' College 
bears the name of School of Practical Arts, and has quite 
a different character. It is also open to men and women 
with two years of college, and its aim is to realize a 

1 The women are in a very large majority; of 1803 students in 1913-14, 
there were 1431 women and 372 men. 

2 It is clear that the plan of this instruction is modeled on that of the 
general form of the college, as regards the duration of the studies and the 
degree awarded. 



UNIVERSITIES 109 

mixed type of higher education, uniting liberal culture 
and technical instruction in very varied directions, 
according to choice; industrial arts, domestic arts (feed- 
ing, cooking, dressmaking, domestic chemistry, phys- 
iological chemistry, nutrition, nursing, hygiene, fine 
arts, music, physical education, etc.). The school has 
laboratories and studios permitting practical work. 
Sixty-four courses were given in 1911-12. At the same 
time, it prepares teachers for these various branches. 

At the University of Chicago, the School of Education, 
which had, in 1915-16, 1394 students (1196 of them 
women), has, in brief, a plan rather like that which we 
have just seen at Columbia. It includes, in fact, four 
divisions: 1, an advanced section for graduates; 2, a 
College of Education — a professional school for the 
training of teachers of secondary and primary branches 
— parallel to the classical college, conceived on the 
same plan, but with specialization of studies in ped- 
agogy; 1 3, the University High School; 4, the Uni- 
versity Elementary School. These last two play, for 
secondary and primary education, the r61e of the 
schools annexed to our primary normal schools; the 
students of the first two sections are trained practically 
in teaching. The students of the School of Education, 
on the other hand, may take any of the University 
courses. 

The two examples of Columbia and Chicago show 
how broadly pedagogical problems are conceived. These 
two schools are the most important; but some exist in 
other universities, which have 300 to 500 students. 

In the training of teachers, a very debatable but very 

1 There are special sections for the manual arts and for domestic economy, 
as at Teachers' College. 



110 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

interesting tendency will be noted, not to establish 
water-tight bulkheads between the three orders, pri- 
mary, secondary, and higher instruction. The results 
ought to be studied, and I have no data in this regard. 

7. Schools of Fine Arts, Architecture, Music 

Architecture is taught in a goodly number of uni- 
versities, in which it constitutes a special school. In 
the universities of Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Cornell, 
this school includes as many as 250 students. It is 
frequently subdivided into two, one for architecture 
proper, and the other called School of Landscape Archi- 
tecture. This last specialization has an important role 
in America, by reason of the creation and development 
of cities. In the West especially, the traveler is struck 
by the uniformity of the plan of the new cities, which 
rests on fixed principles: the streets are laid out in a 
broad fashion, and hygiene is seriously studied. 

At Columbia the School of Fine Arts is subdivided 
into three parts, architecture, music, and design. This 
last is scarcely more than a project. At Harvard the 
Fine Arts courses (to the number of about forty), or of 
music ^ (twelve), form a department in the college. 
The school of architecture alone is distinct. 

The University of Pennsylvania, and Yale, and also 
universities of Illinois and Wisconsin, have each a 
special music school. 

These very summary indications suffice to show the 
extended range of the universities in these directions. 

^ Notably, there is a course on Vincent d'Indy, Faure and Debussy. 



UNIVERSITIES 111 

8. Schools of Journalism 

This type of school, of a quite modern character, was 
first brought into being at Columbia (136 students in 
1913-14), thanks to a gift of one million dollars, made to 
the university by the owner of the World. Later, its 
example has been followed by some other universities 
(Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, Tulane, New York 
University) . 

The aim is to train young men for the journalistic 
profession, and also to perfect journalists already at 
work, in the practice of their profession. The course of 
studies, for the former, is four years, and leads to a de- 
gree of Bachelor of Literature. The program includes 
the following subjects: English, German or French, 
European literatures, history, philosophy, economic 
sciences, history and principles of science, and technical 
courses (reporting, interviewing, publishing, etc.). 



CHAPTER X 

THE PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS 

Third group : Advanced Schools of Commerce. Harvard Graduate School 
of Business Administration. Chicago. Philadelphia. Engineering Schools: 
Origin, the Morrill Act, and the Colleges of Agriculture and Mechanics. 
Independent Schools of Technology. The various engineering specializa- 
tions. Practical character of the instruction. Schools of Agriculture: R61e 
of the Morrill Act. Colleges of Agriculture. Cornell, California, Illinois Uni- 
versities, etc. The Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges. Veterinary 
Schools. 

T CONSIDER together these three kinds of schools, 
^ which tend to assume a large and more and more 
individualized place in many American universities. 
These are the ones which are most foreign to our notion 
of a university. Their existence and their rapid growth 
are in direct relation to the character and needs of 
American society, and to the fact that the universities 
remain in close contact with the general life of the 
nation. 

9. Schools of Commerce 

Commercial schools of a lower order, training busi- 
ness employees or clerks, are extremely numerous in 
the United States. The Report of the Commissioner 
of Education shows, in 1914, 3618 schools where one 
may thus prepare for business, with 346,770 students. 
The universities, faithful to their general aim, have 
proposed to train the general staff of this commercial 
army, the leaders in this domain as in the others. They 
have entered in different degrees on this path; those 

112 



UNIVERSITIES 113 

which have advanced the farthest are those in the great 
cities of the East. 

The University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, re- 
ceived, in 1881, a gift of $100,000 to develop advanced 
commercial instruction, and organized with this in view, 
a school named, in honor of the donor, Wharton School 
of Finance and Economy. It had 1889 students in 1915- 
16. The University of Chicago, from its first years, 
has had a school of Commerce and Administration, 
which has at present 200 students. New York Uni- 
versity has a School of Commerce attended, in 1915- 
16, by 2639 men and women. I shall indicate also 
the figures relative to this category of students in the 
folio wmg universities: Pittsburgh (916), Northwestern 
(741), Wisconsin (542), Illinois (527), California (308). 

Even Harvard, the most classical of the universities, 
organized a school of this kind in 1908, but has tried to 
make a superior type out of it. It has required a Bache- 
lor's degree for entrance and has made of it the Graduate 
School of Business Administration, which had 182 stu- 
dents in 1915-16. The courses in it last two years and 
lead to a master's diploma. The students who enter 
this school at Harvard have already specialized with 
this intention, during their two last years in college, by 
choosing studies relating to economic questions. The 
instruction in the school includes courses on account- 
ing, commercial law, marketing, factory organization 
(in particular there are courses on the Taylor system), 
general commercial practice, exporting, banking and 
finance, insurance transportation (administration and 
development of railroads), printing and publishing, 
public works, lumbering. It gives technical knowledge 
concerning the various branches of business to young 



114 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

men already trained by the general culture of the 
college. 

At Chicago, the School of Commerce and Adminis- 
tration is an undergraduate school, parallel to the clas- 
sical college, and extended by an advanced section for 
graduates. During the four years, the instruction in- 
cludes fundamental required courses and elective 
courses, which the students choose according to their 
intended careers. The school is moreover divided into 
four sections: business, commercial teaching (a sec- 
tion training professors of elementary business schools), 
secretarial course, social service. In this last section 
there are numerous courses on the various social prob- 
lems (public and industrial hygiene, economic legisla- 
tion, municipal legislation, criminality, prostitution, 
immigration, study of the various ethnical types, soci- 
ology, trade unionism, games, etc.) . At the same time 
the students may take advantage of the courses in the 
university. This is an organization of great flexibility, 
providing preparation for interesting social activities. 

At Philadelphia the Wharton School is also an under- 
graduate college, parallel to the classical college, re- 
quiring the same conditions for entrance and offering a 
four years' course. The program is extremely broad, 
and has for its reward the diploma of Bachelor of Science 
in Economics. 

I limit myself to these examples. They suffice to 
show the end, which is to give future business men a 
culture comparable in breadth to the classical culture, 
but adapted to their needs. It will be noted that the 
general mold into which these various practical adap- 
tations are run, clings to the forms of the old college. 



UNIVERSITIES 115 

10. Engineering Schools 

The engineering schools, are, at the present time, one 
of the essential and characteristic elements of the Ameri- 
can universities, and are among those which are every 
day taking on a wider scope. That there should be 
great engineering schools in the United States is not 
surprising; but the interesting fact is that the universi- 
ties should have understood the utility for themselves 
of keeping this branch which is so important for the 
training of the ablest men of the nation, within their 
domain. They did not, however, understand it at first. 
The movement began outside the colleges, and devel- 
oped, in a certain measure, in spite of them. The engi- 
neering schools and the schools of agriculture are 
closely associated in their history, from this point of 
view. 

The oldest engineering school in the United States 
is the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, in New 
York state, founded in 1824, with a very remarkable 
program, for its time, and which even today is very 
prosperous. About 1850, as has been said. Harvard 
established courses in pure and applied sciences, which 
formed the Lawrence Scientific School (where Louis 
Agassiz found a chair), and Yale similarly organized the 
Sheffield Scientific School. These two schools have re- 
mained, in a certain measure, distinct from the college. 
Harvard's has undergone rather numerous vicissitudes, 
and has for the time being, in a very large measure 
merged, so far as teaching is concerned, with the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology. Yale's still exists, 
and has nearly 800 students, who are not mingled at 
all with those of the college proper. The degree of 



116 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

Bachelor of Science (S.B.), has never had a prestige 
entirely equivalent to the A.B. 

In a general way, the colleges, imbued with an un- 
yielding traditional classicism, up to the middle of the 
nineteenth century did not show any eagerness to favor 
the development of the applied sciences. On the other 
hand, the country felt keenly the need of scientific edu- 
cation, and in a very utilitarian form. This conflict 
resulted, in 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, with 
the passage by Congress of the Morrill Act, which has 
been of capital importance in the history of technical 
education and even of the universities in general. By 
the terms of this law, each state or territory of the 
Union was given as many times thirty thousand acres 
of public lands as the state had representatives and 
senators in the Congress. Thus the populous states of 
the East received large tracts of land, about a million 
acres for New York state, 780,000 acres for Pennsyl- 
vania, etc. These lands could be conveyed. The pro- 
ceeds must be devoted to education, and in preference 
to the teaching of agriculture and mechanic arts, but 
without excluding classical education. 

The text of the law provided for "the endowment 
and maintenance of at least one college, whose principal 
object shall be, without excluding other scientific and 
classical studies, and including military instruction,^ to 
teach the branches of knowledge in relation to agricul- 
ture and the mechanic arts, under the conditions which 
the legislatures may respectively prescribe, in order to 
develop the liberal and practical instruction of the in- 
dustrial classes, in view of the various enterprises and 
professions of life." 

^ It was the time of the Civil War. 



UNIVERSITIES 



117 



The resources provided by this law were appHed, in 
each state, to the creation of an institution which gen- 
erally took and often still possesses the title of Agricul- 
tural and Mechanical College. I shall return to these 
establishments when I consider the agricultural schools. 
For the moment, I limit myself to recalling that, in 
many cases, they were the first nucleus of the present 
state universities.! Consequently, the presence of an 
engineering school in the latter is natural and in some 
sort congenial. 

But today, almost all the large or medium sized uni- 
versities, whatever their origin, have one. And besides, 
there are a certain number of independent schools of 
technology or polytechnic schools, some of them very 
important. I shall mention, for example, the following : 



Location 


Name 


Founded 


Number 

of 
Students 


Boston, Mass. 


Mass. Institute of Technology ^ 


1865 


1700 


Brooklyn, N. Y. 


Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn 


1854 


786 


Chicago, Ul. 


Armour Institute of Technology 


1893 


527 


Cleveland, Ohio 


Case School of Applied Science 


1880 


534 


Hoboken, N. J. 


Stevens Institute of Technology 


1871 


324 


Pittsburgh, Pa. 


Carnegie Institute of Technology 


1905 


1219 3 


Troy, N. Y. 


Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 


1824 


626 


Worcester, Mass. 


Worcester Polytechnic Institute 


1868 


535 



1 have not had at hand recent and complete statistics 
of the engineering students. Statistics given by Science, 

^ That is the case with the following: Arizona, Arkansas, California, 
Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana (Purdue University), Kentucky, Louisiana, 
Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin, 
Wyoming. 

2 This institution has shared in the benefits of the Morrill Act. 
^ Of these, two hundred and sixty-eight are women. 



118 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

in 1909, showed 144 technological schools or engineer- 
ing colleges. One hundred of these schools, in 1907, 
already represented more than 33,000 students. On the 
other hand, here are some figures which show the im- 
portance of the engineering schools in some of the large 
universities in 1915-16: 

Students Students 

Michigan 1498 California 712 

Cornell 1437 Pennsylvania 611 

Purdue 1400 Missouri. . 564 

Illinois 1039 Cincinnati 474 

Ohio 841 Stanford 434 

Wisconsin 758 Harvard 422 

Yale (Sheff. Sch.) 790 Columbia 341 ^ 

These indications suffice to show that a real army of 
engineers is constantly being trained in the United 
States, and in large part, in the universities. 

The instruction covers many and various specializa- 
tions, according to the region and its peculiar needs. 
The engineer's education looks less toward giving 
advanced scientific knowledge, and more toward a prac- 
tical preparation. The principal divisions of the engi- 
neering schools bear the following names : civil, sanitary, 
mechanical, electrical, chemical, mining engineers, and 
metallurgists. These are the most important, and are 
in all the schools. But in certain schools there is a special 
section for drainage and tiling engineers. In the south- 
ern states, like Louisiana, there are sections for sugar 
mill engineers and for engineers of the textile industries 
(Georgia, North and South Carolina, Texas). In Cali- 
fornia and in the states using dry farming (Utah, 
Wyoming) there is a special section for irrigation. There 
are special sections for naval architecture (Massachu- 

^ As one sees, the large classical universities are not at the head as to 
engineering schools, at least in number of students. 



UNIVERSITIES 119 

setts Institute of Technology, Michigan), for aeronautics 
and aviation (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) . 
The Armour Institute of Chicago has special courses on 
fire protection engineering. 

The level of studies varies with the institution, but 
in a general way it is relatively low. Harvard, faithful 
to its general system for professional schools, had of 
late years sought to make a graduate school of its 
school of applied sciences (Lawrence^ Scientific School), 
but has given it up. 

Today the plan of engineering studies is modeled 
after that of the classical college — four years lead to 
the degree of Bachelor of science in engineering. In 
the course of the classical college studies, one can pass 
into the engineering schools, and the studies already 
taken are given credit. In normal conditions, the first 
year is common to all the specialties, and includes the 
elements of the sciences, design, and the study of modern 
languages. Specialization begins in the second year, 
which still includes much instruction in pure sciences. 
The technical courses are largely placed in the third 
and fourth years. ^ Each section includes many special 
courses, some required, others optional, and these op- 
tions are extremely varied. The year's instruction is 
completed by several weeks spent in camps, in practical 
field-work, during vacations. 

Harvard, for example, as has already been said, has 
an engineering camp of 750 acres in New Hampshire, 
where for eleven weeks each year, exercises in survey- 
ing, topography and laying out railroad lines are car- 

^ The ordinary studies may be prolonged and deepened during a fifth 
year, leading to the degree of Master of Engineering. In certain universi- 
ties, in particular at Harvard, there is even a degree of Doctor of Engineering, 
given on conditions parallel to the Ph.D. 



120 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

ried on, and a mining camp in Vermont where for six 
weeks the students may practise underground explora- 
tion, the management of the machinery, and the diverse 
operations which the engineer is called upon to carry 
out in the field. 

I have not the necessary qualifications for dealing 
thoroughly with the engineering schools, but there are 
a certain number of facts which seem to come out 
clearly enough to be set down here. 

The first is the immense development of this kind of 
teaching and its direct connection with the industrial 
activity of the country. However, the universities are 
directly associated with this movement, while with us 
they are outside of it. We often speak of the necessary 
relations of science and industry. One of the conditions 
which can develop them is to interest directly the 
scientific centres in the training of the industrial per- 
sonnel. And at the same time it is an important ques- 
tion for the vitality of the universities. If you take from 
them a priori all those youths who look at things from 
the industrial point of view, you weaken them in an 
almost fatal way. On the other hand, industry is on 
the border of pure science. Between the pure and the 
applied sciences, a barrier is erected which does not 
exist in the nature of things, and which would not seem 
to exist if theories and applications rubbed elbows in 
the same schools. 

A second fact is the breadth of the modern equipment 
of the engineering schools and technological institutes. 
In 1916 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
of Boston moved into new buildings on Charles River. 
They cover more than fifty acres. I must note how 
numerous and vast the laboratories are: special labora- 



UNIVERSITIES 121 

tories for steam and compressed air, for hydraulics, cold, 
tests of materials, gas motors, measures of force, for 
mines and metallurgy, physics, chemistry, physical 
chemistry, applied chemistry, electricity, biology and 
public health, bacteriology, geology and mineralogy, 
and aerodynamics. Each of these laboratories has 
powerful machines which are not toys, not to be enum- 
erated here.i The buildings, which have just been 
finished, cost no less than $3,500,000, in large part 
given by an anonymous benefactor. The land cost a 
million dollars. The equipment is estimated at $750,- 
000. The complete program of reinstallation comes to 
$7,000,000. Such is the scale on which a great engineer- 
ing school is rebuilt in America today! 

A last remark which I permit myself is that the con- 
ditions of training of the American engineer and of his 
French colleague are very different. The latter cer- 
tainly has a very marked superiority for theoretical 
scientific instruction. I was told moreover, that since 
the war has brought into the American factories a 
rather large number of our engineers, the fact is per- 
fectly recognized. There is nothing in the United 
States comparable to the preparation in our courses of 
the tlcole polytechnique or the Ecole Centrale. The first- 
year students, the freshnaen, of the engineering schools, 
are very weak.^ It is none the less true that the Ameri- 

^ Cf. Bulletin Massachusetts Institute of Technology, vol, lii, 1916, pp. 
353 ff. 

^ Mr. R. C. Mann, in an investigation published by the Bulletin of the 

Society for the promotion of Engineers' Education (vol. viii, 1916) gives the 

results of tests made of the freshmen in 22 engineering schools. For ex- 

a + b 
ample, only a third of them could calculate exactly, for x = — ^ — the value 

. (x — a)3 X — 2a + 6 
of the algebraic expression, — ^^^-7 r; — ZToh ' 



im UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

can engineer gives abundant proof of all the qualities 
which are expected of him. What is asked of him is 
"not to be a savant, but a practical man, a business 
man and a financier. His art is not only to adapt the 
forces of nature to the use of man, but to do it economi- 
cally. . . . The engineer must not build a fine bridge, 
with costly details, difficult to execute, in the desire of 
leaving a monument behind him." ^ He is first of all a 
man of action. 

The difference between applied science and pure 
science is not in the methods (accordingly bringing the 
two together in the university is good), but in the end, 
that of the first being utilitarian, and that of the second 
philosophical. The practical has its own value and 
dignity, but it must rest not on empiricism but on a 
scientific basis. The engineer's education must be in- 
spired with scientific principles, but not lose sight of 
the practical side. It must not be theoretical, but its 
motto must be, as Mr. McLaurin, the president of the 
Boston Institute of Technology said, "learning by 
doing." 

This practical character is the fundamental trait of 
the training of American engineers. It is sometimes 
pushed very far. At the University of Cincinnati, the 
engineering students work in alternate periods in the 
university laboratories and in the factories of the city, 
with which an arrangement has been made to this 
effect. 

The truth would probably lie between our system and 
that of the Americans. The latter would gain by having 
engineers with a more solid scientific instruction at the 
foundation — in that as in the other parts of the univer- 

1 Swain, Science, January 2, 1910, pp. 81-93. 



UNIVERSITIES 123 

sity, the real problem is the strengthening of secondary- 
studies — but the education of our engineers is much 
too theoretical, not even useful in real life, and turns 
the mind away from the practical conception of things. 
Think of the mathematical education of the Polytech- 
nic students, and even their education in physics and 
chemistry. What share has the laboratory — and real 
life — in it? 

On the other hand, the American engineer's career is 
determined by what he has to give in life. The di- 
ploma with which he starts out plays, so to speak, no 
part. He is judged by his acts as a mature man, not on 
a prize won in youth at school, under conditions which 
have no relation to those which make for the man's 
worth. They do not begin by eliminating, by way of 
prizes, the greater number of the young men, while 
giving to a minority the advantage of a formidable 
handicap, which often turns them away from all serious 
effort on the day when it ought to begin, and which 
makes them believe in a definitive superiority, before 
it has been put to the test of life. The American ap- 
proaches life at twenty-two, without being tired out by 
the conventional school work, without being spoiled by 
the success he may have had in it, or discouraged, but 
with the feeling that life is just beginning. The French- 
man of that age, often with his head buzzing with 
theory, is already tired and has the illusion that he has 
finally stood the test. 

11. Agricultural Schools 

The Morrill Act of 1862, completed by other legis- 
lative acts which have added new gifts, was the point of 
departure for very widespread teaching of agriculture, 



124 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

as well as of engineering. Agriculture was, before in- 
dustry, and is today as much as the latter, one of the 
fundamental resources of the United States. Its con- 
ditions are very different from those of Europe, and 
resemble those of industry. The enormity of distances, 
the labor difficulties, the biological conditions, often 
very different from ours, have compelled great innova- 
tions, which were all the easier because there was, on 
American soil, no obstacle of traditions, more than a 
thousand years old. The value of scientific methods is 
today understood everywhere by the American farmer, 
and the diffusion of agricultural instruction, through 
the universities and the Agricultural and Mechanical 
Colleges, has a great deal to do with it.^ The farmer of 
the younger generation has passed through one of 
them; he has the idea of the power of science and of 
method. This mentality explains the rapid propaga- 
tion of the processes of dry farming and of irrigation. 
The immense and magnificent orchards of California 
suggest the psychology of an industrial environment 
much more than that of a farming environment. 

The teaching of agricultural biology is scarcely rep- 
resented in the eastern universities. Yet Harvard had 
one of the first agricultural schools, but it has now 
transformed it into an institute of general applied bi- 
ology, devoted especially to the experimental study of 

1 A great farm near Chicago, such as one I had an opportunity to visit, 
reveals a quite different kind of life and of methods from those of our rural 
districts. In spite of the remoteness from urban centres, and the isolation, 
it is much more impregnated with the city atmosphere and ideas. It is 
true that the distances are today very much lessened by the automobile. 
In Kansas, a great agricultural state, there was in 1916 an automobile for 
every five inhabitants. That is to say, there was scarcely a farmer who did 
not own one. 



UNIVERSITIES 125 

heredity, the Bussey Institution. But it is especially 
the universities which have benefited from the Morrill 
Act which show a great development toward agricul- 
ture, and in which it has a special college. 

Cornell University, at Ithaca, N. Y., at the time of 
its foundation, received lands granted by the Morrill 
Act to New York state — more than 1,000,000 acres. 
Its college of agriculture is the most developed of all, 
and has more than 1500 students. It is housed and 
equipped in a very complete and modern manner; out- 
side of the fundamental scientific courses, a very com- 
plete group of special courses adapted to agriculture: 
plant physiology, horticulture, pomology, vegetable 
pathology, growth of plants, entomology, animal 
physiology, biological chemistry, forest biology, struc- 
ture of soils, rural economy, farm equipment and man- 
agement, agricultural mechanics, stock and poultry 
raising, dairying, etc. 

Entomology, in particular, under the direction of 
Professor Comstock, for over forty years, has had a 
development which it has attained nowhere else, and 
Cornell is one of the principal centres for the training of 
the staff of the Federal Bureau of Entomology, which 
will be considered in the second part. There are no less 
than twenty courses in entomology, general and special- 
ized, elementary or advanced. The studies in entomol- 
ogy can be combined with those in agriculture and in 
botany. For these sciences there is as rich a diversity 
of studies as for the classical college. A detailed de- 
scription of them will be found in Mr. Paul MarchaFs 
book, which I have already had occasion to cite.^ 

The Illinois and California universities, and even a 

1 Log. cit, pp. 250-287. 



ne UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

certain number of others, like that of Nevada, also 
have large colleges of agriculture. 

Here are the numbers of students in the agricultural 
colleges of a few universities, in 1915-16: 

Cornell 1535 Califolrnia 540 

Wisconsin 1091 Minnesota 598 

Illinois 958 Missouri 536 

Ohio 973 Nebraska 436 

At the University of California there are numerous 
courses relating to the various branches of agriculture 
in that state, such as courses in oenology, citriculture, 
pomology, and oleiculture. The instruction in the col- 
lege of agriculture is combined with that of the college 
of engineering, for example, so far as irrigation is con- 
cerned. 

The plan of the studies of the agricultural colleges 
is modeled on the classical college, four years leading to 
the degree of Bachelor of Science in agriculture. There 
are also higher studies leading to the degrees of Master 
and even of Doctor. In 1913-14 8503 Bachelor's de- 
grees and 1497 higher degrees were granted, including the 
Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges. Of the Bachelors, 
1903 were students in the agricultural courses. 

The state universities and their agricultural instruc- 
tion cannot be isolated from the agricultural colleges, 
of which they are an extension. ^ Universities and 
colleges, the progeny of the Morrill Act today num- 
ber sixty-nine. Seventeen of this number, exclusively 
for negroes, are of a primary level, and are really 

^ Here is the list of the courses given in these colleges: agriculture, horti- 
culture, forest biology, veterinary science, engineering (mechanical, civil, 
electrical, mining, chemical, railroad, textile industry, etc.), architecture, 
domestic economy, chemistry, pharmacy, general sciences. 



UNIVERSITIES 



ni 



workshops. But the following figures, relative to all, 
show what enormous resources are dedicated to the 
diffusion of agricultural and mechanical knowledge, 
and how these resources have grown recently. ^ 



1892 



1914 



Number of colleges 

Number of volumes in their libraries. . . . 

Total value of their property 

Total revenues 

Number of students in the colleges proper 



60 


69 


724,000 


4,395,000 


012,000 


$60,298,000 


033,000 


$34,891,224 


10,719 


38,971 2 



A small number of these colleges are specially agri- 
cultural, such as that of Massachusetts, at Amherst, 
which has played a part similar to that of Cornell, in 
entomology. 

Some of them are very large. Those of Colorado, 
Iowa, Michigan, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Pennsyl- 
vania, and Utah, have several thousand students. 
They are interesting as still representing what the 
state universities were at the beginning, and from 
which a certain number still differ only relatively little. 

12. Veterinary Schools 

In 1913 the veterinary schools numbered 22, with 
364 professors and 2481 students (only one woman). 
Veterinary instruction has only very recently developed 

1 The Morrill Act was completed by other laws, in 1883, 1890, and 1907. 
The two last, alone, carry an annual federal appropriation of $50,000 to 
each state. These laws have organized in every state, agricultural experi- 
ment stations, which are often in regular connection with the colleges or 
universities. 

2 Thirty-seven per cent follow the agricultural courses, 40 per cent the 
mechanical courses, 13 per cent those in sciences, 10 per cent those in 
domestic economy. 



128 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

in a regular and methodical manner, and in the agri- 
cultural colleges or the state universities. The first 
course relative to the veterinary art was begun at 
Cornell in 1868. The oldest school dates from 1880. 
The most important is that of Cornell. There are also 
important ones at New York University, the University 
of Pennsylvania, Ohio State, and George Washington 
Universities. The course of veterinary studies is gen- 
erally three years. 

To conclude this rapid review of the schools, into 
which an American university of today is divided, I 
must add that their respective limits are not absolutely 
rigid. We have been able to see, in the course of the 
preceding survey, that, for example, the students of the 
schools or colleges of agriculture, of industry, of com- 
merce, or of education, take the general cultural courses 
under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. There are even 
many courses common to the colleges of agriculture 
and of engineering. A certain confusion may result 
from this. But on the other hand, there is an advantage 
in that the university keeps its unity and that the more 
and more numerous subdivisions which must neces- 
sarily be differentiated, are not separated by water- 
tight bulkheads, as are, for example, our Faculties of 
Letters and of Sciences. 



CHAPTER XI 

UNIVERSITY EXTENSION AND THE SUMMER 

SESSION 

Importance and character of the summer session. University of Chicago 
quarter system. Extension proper: its beginnings.- Chautauqua institutes. 
Extension at Harvard, at Columbia, in the state universities (California, 
Wisconsin). Breadth of university extension. 

THE activity of the American universities is not 
strictly limited to their regular instruction. It has 
a very considerable complement in university extension 
under its diverse forms, and in the summer session, 
which is a particular case of extension, but which we 
shall consider first. 

Harvard seems to have been the first university to 
hold vacation courses, beginning with 1871. But espe- 
cially of late years this practice has been generalized 
and attendance has been greatly broadened. Yet there 
are a certain number of universities, like Yale and 
Princeton, which have not adopted it. In order to give 
an idea of its success, it suffices to indicate the numbers 
enrolled ^ at this session, in a few centres, in 1915. 

Students Students 

Columbia 5590 Cornell 1436 

Chicago 3984 Harvard 1250 

California 3179 Illinois 938 

Wisconsin 2602 Minnesota 867 

Michigan 1594 Johns Hopkins 350 

Attendance at these sessions is quite different from 
that of the academic year. It consists mostly of ma- 

1 These students do not figure in the totals given in the preceding chap- 
ters of this book as the regular population of the universities. 

129 



130 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

ture men and women — of whom a great many are 
graduates — who come to complete their instruction 
in a definite subject, or to bring it into the current of 
recent progress. Women are admitted, even in uni- 
versities Kke Harvard, which exclude them from their 
regular studies. Physicians, engineers, teachers of sec- 
ondary or primary schools, come to study a specialty. 
In general they enroll in a single course only, for which 
they pay a rather high fee, $10 to $60, according to the 
course, at Harvard. This course may include numerous 
meetings, and the session lasts, depending on the uni- 
versity, from six to eight weeks, in July and August. 
The ordinary students too are often allowed to enroll 
in one of these courses, and they can thus make up a 
deficiency in the current year, or hasten the end of 
their studies. 

It is an extremely practical institution, which per- 
mits many classes of persons to complete their educa- 
tion without giving up their ordinary occupations. 
These auditors, more serious and more exacting than 
the ordinary students, have bid farewell to all the 
frivolities of the college. In certain respects, this sum- 
mer session is nearer to higher education as we under- 
stand it, than that of the normal year. 

The universities make many exchanges of professors 
for this session. Many members of the eastern universi- 
ties go to Berkeley, for example. 

The case of the University of Chicago is rather pecu- 
liar, and deserves to be specially noted. In reality, the 
University of Chicago has completely suppressed the 
vacation period. It works the year round without 
stop, and the term unit there is the quarter, instead of 
the half-year. The courses are consequently combined. 



UNIVERSITIES 131 

Each professor should have three quarters of work and 
one quarter of rest, which he can take at his choice, at 
one season or another. The vacation period here is 
simply the summer quarter, in which the university 
offers its usual resources. That is the cause of the special 
success of these vacation courses at the University of 
Chicago. Other universities should be tempted, it 
seems, to imitate this innovation, which moreover, 
allows professors to be free at periods other than the 
usual vacations. 

The Summer School is only a very special case of 
university extension proper, a very democratic work, 
whose program is immense and generous, but not free 
from whims and sometimes from a demagogic spirit. 
In fact, it is a question of bringing science into contact 
with the people, of allowing men and women, already 
absorbed by professional occupations, access to culture 
and to the university degrees, and above all to make 
known the applications of science to the masses, so as 
to make these applications come into use and thus to 
hasten progress. 

Before the universities themselves had undertaken 
this task, in which, however, the English universities 
had preceded them, different endeavors, organized 
mostly by university people, had begun it, in the 
form of popular lectures, correspondence work, and 
the organization of public debates. 

Such was the American National Lyceum, founded 
in 1831, in which men like Daniel Webster and Emer- 
son actively collaborated. 

Such, above all, was the Chautauqua Literary and 
Scientific Circle (C. L. S. C). Chautauqua is the In- 



132 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

dian name of a lake in New York state, on whose 
shores, in 1874, an enormous work of popular instruc- 
tion during the summer, was organized. A city was 
created there, which exists only during the few weeks 
of the session, and which then attracts more than 10,000 
persons. Almost all the subjects of the college program, 
music, etc., are taught there. Aside from the regular 
courses, grouped in a cycle of four years, there are 
lectures, public debates, concerts, and dramatic per- 
formances. On this model numerous daughter institu- 
tions have been created, which bear the same name, and 
Chautauqua circuits, a group of lecturers, actors, mu- 
sicians, from July to September, make a tour of a 
series of towns in which this system of teaching is ap- 
plied, thus reaching a large public. ^ The name Chau- 
tauqua stands for advanced popular instruction. 

Permanent foundations, like the Lowell Institute at 
Boston, and the Peabody Institute at Baltimore, are 
also for popular education through lectures and other 
means. 

After various vicissitudes, extension work has been 
firmly entrenched and developed in the universities 
for twenty years past. The western universities have 
undertaken it on the vastest scale. A few years ago the 
University of Chicago had organized it at Chicago and 
elsewhere, and its lecturers radiated into twenty-eight 
states, addressing nearly 50,000 auditors. The old uni- 
versities of the East are also taking part in this move- 
ment. Harvard, in collaboration with the neighboring 
institutions (Boston University, Massachusetts In- 
stitute of Technology, Tufts College, Wellesley College, 

^ See H. B. Adams, Monograph on Education in the United States. (Paris 
Exposition, 1900), Monograph no. 16. In it will be found a bibliography. 



UNIVERSITIES 133 

etc.) J Has created, at several points in Boston, regular 
courses, parallel to those of the university, and leading 
to a degree of Associate in Arts, A. A., which may give 
access to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and 
thus lead to the degree of Master. 

Extension at Columbia shows a very large develop- 
ment, especially in the form of evening courses, in the 
university buildings or in various places in New York. 
The catalogue of the University for 1912-13, the most 
recent I have been able to consult, mentions no less 
than two hundred and fifty of these extension courses. 
Thanks to them, it is possible, while busy at one's pro- 
fession, to do the work equivalent to the two first years 
of college, freshman and sophomore, bit by bit, and to 
enter the university later in a regular manner to finish 
the course for the Bachelor's degree. Besides, certain 
of these courses have an essentially practical character: 
thus the department of physics of the university gives 
courses in optics for opticians. 

In the state universities, extension fills an enormous 
place. It is one of the means of justifying in the eyes of 
the people, the huge expenditures made for higher 
education, by bringing the knowledge which they can 
assimilate or which may be useful to them, in contact 
with the masses everywhere. 

The forms which this extension takes are many. 
There are lectures and even regular courses, in the chief 
cities of the state, and even in unimportant centres. 
To this end they bring together, in each of these cities, 
in a permanent way, appropriate means of demonstra- 
tion, cinematographs, projection lanterns, even actual 
laboratories on a small scale, and also a nucleus of per- 
sons in settlement to aid the traveling lecturers. Dis- 



134 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

cussions are also specially organized. And there is 
correspondence work. The applications of biology to 
agriculture are among the subjects which are the most 
abundantly represented, and that is explained by the 
importance of agriculture in the state universities and 
no less by the political influence of the farmers in the 
agricultural states of the Middle and Far West. They 
organize numerous demonstrations on the farms them- 
selves; special trains travel over the state, carrying 
material and a staff. There is sometimes a rather 
demagogic stage-setting there, but apart from certain 
exaggerations, it remains none the less true that all the 
applications of the sciences can thus be brought into 
direct contact with the farmers, and that that contrib- 
utes toward facilitating the application of new pro- 
cesses, and toward developing the taste and the feeling 
for progress in the rural population, and toward restrain- 
ing very much their spirit of routine. Thanks to the 
prior development of these works, they have been able 
to make extremely powerful campaigns of social interest, 
for example, against alcoholism or tuberculosis. 

The University of Wisconsin is one of those which 
have conceived this work on the vastest plan, hoping 
to spread in the whole community which surrounds it 
the spirit which animates it, and the practical results 
of science; to be itself in some sort present everywhere. 
Moreover, it receives from the state an annual sub- 
sidy of $30,000, for extension in the domain of agricul- 
ture alone. 

The University of California has also made a great 
work of its extension, and one which it tries to spread 
afar into numerous cities. It has created within itself, 
for the methodical organization of this work, a special 



UNIVERSITIES 135 

section under the name of Department of University Ex- 
tension, which includes five bureaus : one for the organi- 
zation of regular courses in various cities; another for 
correspondence work in the various sciences; a third 
for the organization of lectures; a fourth to organize 
public discussions, which acts especially through the 
distribution of bulletins, bibliographies, programs, etc. ; 
finally, the fifth, called Bureau of Municipal References, 
popularizes all the questions of hygiene and urban or- 
ganization by way of bulletins or inquiries. In 1910, 
of thirty-two state universities, twenty-three had organ- 
ized extension, and fifteen had created a special de- 
partment with this end, as we have just seen for the 
University of California. 

The Chautauqua system has served as a general 
model for all these enterprises. You see how much 
breadth this extension work has, and what social use- 
fulness it may possess; also how it draws closer to- 
gether the university and society, science and the people. 
Still more than the existence of engineering or agri- 
cultural schools, it marks the utilitarian, realistic, and 
democratic tendency of the state universities in the 
West. In spite of the necessary imperfections in this 
work, which is still in its beginnings, it does open the 
minds of the masses and accelerates progress. 



CHAPTER XII 

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS ON THE ORGANIZATION 

OF THE UNIVERSITIES. UNIVERSITIES 

AND SOCIETY 

Insufficiency of preparation by secondary education. Broad contact of the 
university with youth. Evolution of the universities. R61e of the state uni- 
versities. Broadening of the social function of the universities. Contact 
with society. R61e of the alumni. Loyalty and donations. Links with the 
university: clubs. 

AFTER having passed in review successively the 
-^^ diverse parts and the diverse modes of activity of 
the universities, it is fitting to cast a general glance over 
them and to bring out the most essential facts relative 
to their present state and the probable course of their 
further development. Institutions, as Mr. Eliot has 
justly said, are more interesting through their tenden- 
cies than through their immediate condition. 

The notion of a university, in all the great countries, 
at present answers a double object: teaching of the 
higher branches of human knowledge and organization 
of original research, in order to push back still further 
the limits of our knowledge. By unanimous consent, 
it is this second mission which seems the more essential 
and that which is truly specific. The American univer- 
sity world constantly affirms this conviction. For the 
moment, however, I leave it one side, and shall return 
in the second part of this book to the examination of 
the American university from the point of view of re- 
search. I am now considering it only from the point 

136 



UNIVERSITIES 137 

of view of teaching. For after all that is the funda- 
mental element. Research can be built soundly only 
on the foundation of solid instruction. 

American universities have a very great power, in 
that they attract all the youth. All higher education 
is carried on within them. More and more the technical 
and professional schools tend to come back into them. 
Those which develop brilliantly outside, like the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology, are, in fact, slightly 
specialized but still true universities. Young people 
enter them in the same way and leave under the same 
conditions. The fact to be emphasized is that the doors 
of all these establishments are wide open and that no 
one of them gives to those who leave it a monopoly for 
certain careers. 

The universities have set themselves the task of fur- 
nishing, for all branches of social activity, the leaders 
whom a higher education ought to train. Nothing 
hampers them in this program. They extend it more 
and more, and having liberty and autonomy, free com- 
petition is, for them, an active stimulus to perfect its 
realization. 

The great problem of teaching which they have to 
solve at present is to conciliate the necessity for general 
education, assuring breadth of views and culture, with 
that of the technical teaching required for the various 
careers. This problem arises in all countries. What are 
its difficulties and its special modalities in the United 
States? 

The general training of the mind ought to be at least 
well prepared by secondary education. That was the 
virtue of our classical studies, and we ought to conserve 



138 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

it tenaciously, while taking account of the modifica- 
tions which the general present conditions must cause 
their former arrangement to undergo. Secondary 
teaching seems to me to be the weakest point of the 
American system of education. The student who comes 
out of the high school at eighteen has not a sufficient 
intellectual training. A good part of his university 
studies consists in finishing his secondary studies. A 
number of the best qualified American educators, W. R. 
Harper, who was the first president of the University 
of Chicago and who put it brilliantly in the first rank, 

D. S. Jordan, who did the same for Leland Stanford, 

E. J. James, who is now President of the University of 
Illinois, and many others, recognize that in a general 
way the first two years of college ought to be put 
back in the high school. The real problem is at the 
same time to have the young Americans finish these 
studies at eighteen, as is the case in France and Ger- 
many. Four or five years in the university would then 
suffice to complete the theoretical education and give 
the technical education necessary for the various 
careers. The four years of college, from eighteen to 
twenty-two, a mere preparation for further technical 
studies, are evidently too long, and are a legacy of the 
past which cannot continue. Fundamentally, in the 
past, the college was simply secondary instruction. 

From this earlier condition, the American university 
has kept, to its advantage, the habit of a close and 
methodical control over the work of its students. It 
treats them, in this respect, as boys, who must be fol- 
lowed attentively, not as mature men whom it can 
allow to act at their own will. This habit has been 
transmitted to all its new parts. The chief reproach 



UNIVERSITIES 139 

which could be made to its teaching, in a general way, 
is that it is not sufficiently impregnated with synthesis. 
Mr. Woodrow Wilson made this criticism by declaring 
that we must not confound information and education. 
The American student is not left enough to himself, 
and led to reflect. He is constantly guided. But the 
theoretical and practical instruction offered him is very 
well coordinated, and when he really has the taste for 
work, he can draw excellent results from it. 

One of the points which seem to me most important 
in the evolution of the American universities is the 
place which the applied sciences have taken in it, in par- 
ticular, all that concerns engineering and agriculture. 
The universities have thereby escaped from the danger 
of a mandarinate. Institutions for higher education (I 
leave one side those which are completely specialized 
for research) do not seem to me really able to live, in 
modern society, on the basis of the speculative sciences 
alone. I do not at all wish to belittle the latter, and the 
university is their true and only home, but they need 
contact with reality to remain living. 

It is sound that all speculation should be tempered 
by consideration of the real, and likewise that specula- 
tive teaching should be in the same surroundings with 
practical teaching. I believe, therefore, that an organi- 
zation like that of the modern American college, which 
associates the pure and applied sciences, is in principle 
preferable to one which, like our own, isolates on the 
one hand faculties of science, and on the other, technical 
schools. This has the double advantage of not oppos- 
ing pure science and applied science, and of not creating 
institutions which cannot really recruit their own num- 
bers and which end fatally in a mandarinate system. 



140 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

The university which is both theoretical and practical 
is a much more real representation of society. 

Undoubtedly the Morrill Act was the great ferment 
of the development of technical and agricultural in- 
struction in the United States. In the state universities, 
which sprang from it, this teaching at first took, and in 
many cases still has, a too radically utilitarian spirit, 
which political influences tend to impose. Little by 
little, however, this excess of utilitarianism is fated to 
give place to a broader conception. The existence and 
spirit of the private universities suffices to draw the 
state universities into the path of general culture. In 
his book on the American universities, Mr. Slosson 
justly notes the immediate and large influence which 
the creation of the University of Chicago, in 1890, 
exercised over the state university of Illinois, by bring- 
ing about in the latter a great development of the in- 
struction in pure culture. 

The dualism, and up to a certain point the rivalry, 
of the private universities and the state universities, 
seems to me an extremely favorable circumstance. The 
first have evidently implanted, and till now represented 
true intellectual culture in the United States, but if 
they had been alone, they would perhaps have been too 
narrowly confined within their classical tradition, and 
in spite of everything, in a too narrowly aristocratic 
form of education. Is not that, moreover, the story of 
Oxford and Cambridge up to a recent period.? The ex- 
istence of the state universities has undoubtedly driven 
them to broaden their field toward the modern needs 
of society. On the contrary, they are by their very 
qualities, the witness which obliges the raw and violently 
utilitarian democracies of the West to let their universi- 



UNIVERSITIES 141 

ties evolve toward culture, and to raise their standard. 
Under the influence of these two tendencies, the teach- 
ing of the applied sciences remains practical, and little 
by little its basic level is raised. 

The philosopher Royce, so much esteemed by every- 
one at Harvard, a pure logician by profession, was cer- 
tainly not of a spirit which could be taxed with limited 
utilitarianism. He has shown, moreover, from the 
first phases of the present war, what high idealistic 
sentiments animated him.^ In 1909 at the Congress 
of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science at Baltimore,^ he characterized, in a very just 
and very profound way, in my opinion, the opposing 
tendencies which divided the opinions of American 
educators, the spirit of the old classical college, and that 
of the modern western universities. One cannot think, 
he says, of opposing radically what is called the college 
to the technical and professional studies. "One may 
protest as one will that one misuses the term college 
when one talks of a college of agriculture, and that one 
ought instead to speak of a technical school of training 
in agriculture. . . . But whatever one does by way of 
formulation, of definition, and of criticism, the state 
universities will continue to show that the best things 
that you can do for the young men who are to be trained 
in the humanities is to keep both them and their teach- 
ers in pretty close contact with the pupils and teachers 
who are engaged in technical studies. . . . For my 
part," he says, "I suppose one of the notable functions 
of an academic institution to be the uniting rather than 

1 See, in particular, his speech, "The Duty of Americans in the Present 
War," delivered at a meeting in Tremont Temple, Boston, in January, 1916. 

2 Science, March 12, 1909, pp. 401-407. 



142 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

the further sundering of the various more or less learned 
activities of modern life, the humanizing of engineers, 
and the preparation of the young followers of the 
humanities for some practical service of mankind." 

The eastern universities must, in the future, accord- 
ing to Royce, broaden their plan more and more, after 
the type of the state universities. "The centre of 
gravity of our future American academic life can not 
always, can not I think very long, remain east of the 
AUeghenies. Through a perfectly natural and inevi- 
table evolution, the state universities of the Middle West 
and of the Far West, supported as they are, and will be, 
by the vast resources of the communities from which 
they emanate, and guided by an educational ideal ever 
being perfected, will occupy, in one or two generations, 
an almost central place in American academic life." 

The universities are, therefore, according to this 
authoritative fo»ecast, definitely committed to that 
path, in which their role, as Mr. E. J. James, president 
of the University of Illinois says, is "to provide for the 
training of the youth of the country for all the careers 
requiring an extended scientific preparation, based on 
an appropriate liberal education." ^ They will estab- 
lish new speciahzed colleges for new needs. "Any pro- 
fession can be practised rightly only on a scientific 
basis." Therefore, in brief, positive science becomes 
the basis of preparation for practical life and inspires 
all the activity of the university. The university is to 
diffuse this spirit of positive science into all the divi- 
sions of society. 

This movement dates from yesterday; yet it is being 
accomplished in the state universities with a speed of 

1 Science. 



UNIVERSITIES ' 143 

realization which is part of the American temperament, 
but which is perhaps not yet sufficiently marked by 
calmness. "These universities," says Mr. J. M. Bald- 
win,i "are the field on which all sorts of pedagogical 
experiments battle, where the newest and boldest 
theories are put in practice, and where 'up-to-date' 
methods receive an often premature application. They 
seek constantly to obtain practical results, which may 
impress the exacting public which pays the taxes. 
Hence there is a veritable whirlpool of ideas and 
methods. A state of mind characterized by the urgent 
need of action, but which at the same time lacks as- 
surance and confidence, is produced." It is to be hoped, 
however, that equilibrium will be established little by 
little. In any case, by turning, in a fashion perhaps at 
present excessive, in a utiKtarian direction, the uni- 
versities are but returning to the tendencies of one of 
the founders of American society, whose idealistic in- 
tent, at the same time, we cannot deny — Benjamin 
Franklin. 

The tradition of the old private universities of the 
East on the one hand, the radical and utilitarian spirit 
of the state universities on the other, are the two an- 
tagonistic elements between which we must hope to 
see established a compromise which will maintain the 
rights of culture. This result would be much more 
surely gained if the student arrived at the university 
already better trained and more cultivated. 

The universities have another solid contact with 
society, one of a traditional and sentimental order, and 
in fact of rather aristocratic tendencies. It is the at- 

1 Foi et Vie, Cahier B, 1917, p. 15. 



144 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

tachment which Hnks every American to the institu- 
tion, college or university, through which he has passed. 
This loyalty is a characteristic of their way of life in 
general, but it has a special importance for the private 
universities, for on it, in fact, their whole existence is 
based. Its force and prevalence are one of the undeni- 
able marks of an idealistic side in the American mental- 
ity. And of course the universities are carefully on the 
watch to maintain it. It rests on the solidarity and 
comradeship which college life establishes between the 
students, and which in some degree identifies their 
memories of youth in an agreeable form with the in- 
stitution through which they have passed. 

The university becomes the centre of a vast family, 
so much the more powerful, the more numerous it is.^ 
It deserves the name of Alma Mater, and its foster 
children, its alumni, consider it a duty to provide for 
its needs, after having been educated by it. Gifts to 
universities have thus become a normal element of the 
civic activity of the wealthy class. They suffice to as- 
sure, not only their existence, but their development, 
and often even with an excessive luxury. They permit 
vast conceptions and rapid realizations to those who 
hold in their hands the destinies of a university. Ex- 
amples abound. 

At Princeton, my colleague W. B. Scott, the eminent 
paleontologist, walking with me across the campus, 
showed me with pride the seventy-five large buildings 
which stand there, magnificent laboratories, sumptuous 
halls, dormitories, all built with gifts of alumni. 

When Harvard built its magnificent medical school 
in Boston, a considerable sum was lacking to erect one 

1 Cf. Table p. 269, col. 6. 



UNIVERSITIES 145 

of the five large buildings which compose it. They 
went and explained the situation to the banker, Pier- 
pont Morgan, who, after having listened and reflected, 
replied simply, "All right, sirs," and promised the sum. 
It was a matter of more than a million dollars. Those 
are solutions which have nothing of bureaucratic slow- 
ness and red tape. 

In April, 1912, a young graduate of Harvard, Harry 
Elkins Widener, perished on the Titanic, at the same 
time with his father. His mother, who escaped drown- 
ing, gave the university the collection of books which 
her son, an ardent bibliophile, had gathered. The uni- 
versity was at that time planning to rebuild its li- 
brary, which was too small for the six or seven hundred 
thousand volumes it contained, and above all, abso- 
lutely insufficient for the future. Mrs. Widener easily 
allowed herself to be persuaded to associate the memory 
of her son with this reconstruction. She took entire 
charge of it; her architect executed the monument, on 
land designated and according to indications furnished 
by the university. The latter did not even know — at 
least officially — what it cost (it is said between 
$2,000,000 and $3,000,000). The cornerstone was laid 
in June, 1913. The library was dedicated in June, 
1915, at Commencement, and completely installed for 
the opening of the following academic year. There 
also, no administrative formality intervened to tram- 
mel the gift nor to retard the execution. 

Quite near Boston, Tufts College is an institution of 
moderate importance, whose buildings rise on the 
slopes and summit of a grassy hill, the view from which 
is magnificent. The biological laboratories occupy a 
building constructed with funds given by an alumnus 



146 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

whose career was not precisely intellectual, Barnum, 
the proprietor of the famous circus. 

And these examples could be multiplied. There is 
scarcely a week in which Science does not record one or 
several important donations. It is one of the most 
usual ways of perpetuating a memory. 

These last months too, we have had a touching ex- 
ample of it, and one which is very dear to us. Before 
America became our ally, more than one university was 
represented on our front by numerous alumni. Harvard 
by several hundreds. Last spring more than thirty of 
these young Americans had already fallen gloriously. 
Among them the aviator Victor Emmanuel Chapman 
was killed, June 23, 1916, at Verdun, in an aerial com- 
bat. To perpetuate his memory, a group of subscribers 
have founded a fellowship at Harvard, in his name, 
which will be awarded to a French student. 

If you wish to appreciate the breadth which these 
gifts take, and what a factor they are in the development 
of the universities, you have only to consult the Re- 
port of the Commissioner of Education. Here are some 
figures taken from that for 1913-14. 

The total of gifts made to the universities and col- 
leges during that year, and coming to the knowledge 
of the federal bureau of education, reaches $29,9^7,137, 
and that is not an exceptional figure, for the total for 
the years 1901-14 is over $300,000,000. 

The table on page 147 indicates, in dollars, the figures 
for a few universities. 

These figures are evidently rather variable from one 
year to another. But they are always considerable. 
I will add that the gifts received in 1913-14 exceeded 
$100,000 in forty-five universities, and colleges, and 



UNIVERSITIES 147 

the total for these estabHshments was more than 
$20,000,000. 





Total 
Receipts 


Receipts 

from 
Tuition 


Income 

from 

Endowment 


Gifts 


University 


For 
Current 
Expenses 


For New 
Equip- 
ment 


For 
Capital 


Total 
Gifts 


Harvard 


$4,287,185 


$895,497 


$1,344,904 


$256,239 


.$253,914 


$1,379,356 


$1,889,509 


Yale 


2,600,619 


742,510 


809,171 


138,390 


125,000 


756,457 


1,019,847 


Columbia 


6,685,869 


1,017,137 


1,138,875 


468,607 


114,936 


680,647 


1,264,190 


Chicago 


3,332,151 


743,598 


1,082,514 


27,966 


665,211 


626,803 


1,519,986 


Cornell 


6,790,260 


535,346 


610,208 


8,623 


3,000 


4,364,486 


4,376,103 


J. Hopkins 


738,049 


121,130 


244,210 


19,420 


10,681 


118,909 


149,010 



The universities are evidently watchful to maintain 
the bonds which unite them to their alumni. They in- 
terest them in their life by giving them, as has been 
seen, an important part in their government. In most 
cases, indeed, the trustees are elected by the alumni. 
The ceremonies which end the academic year are an 
occasion to bring back a large number of them to the 
campus, and to awaken their interest not only for the 
university as they knew it, but as it is changing. 

There are anniversary dates on which the tradition 
of the return of the classes is particularly observed, for 
example, twenty or twenty-five years after graduation. 
And these rites bring with them a gift to the university. 
At Harvard it is now a formal rule that at the twenty- 
fifth anniversary of graduation each class gives to the 
Alma Mater a sum of $100,000, which thus becomes an 
item of the ordinary budget. 

University solidarity borrows from American cus- 
toms another more constant and no less solid link, the 
club, which is the most living, and perhaps the most 
general form of association of American life. 



148 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

We have already seen the perhaps exaggerated r61e 
which clubs play in the life of the student. Did we not 
go so far as to say that the college itself, especially 
where its traditions have been best preserved, was only 
a country club, where one spent four as agreeable years 
as one could? ^ 

But it is through the clubs of former students that 
each establishment maintains and consolidates its 
family of alumni. Thus there are Harvard clubs in all 
the great centres of America, and even wherever there 
is a very small group of Harvard men. Honolulu has 
one, Paris also; the old American university gives us 
this example of solidarity and fidelity. In New York 
and in Boston, where the Harvard men are numerous, 
these clubs have each four or Rve thousand members, 
and have been able to house themselves in a comfort- 
able residence, an animated and complete centre of 
Harvard life. Yale, Princeton, Cornell, likewise have 
their individual clubs in New York. The Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology of Boston has its own there too. 

In the majority of cases, the clubs of the various uni- 
versities in the same city, are federated in a general 
University Club, in order to have a luxurious material 
equipment, each one cultivating separately there its 
own memories. 

Thanks to these clubs, there is scarcely a striking 
event in the career of the university in which its alumni, 
even the most distant, are not associated, often in a very 
direct manner. We had a particularly significant ex- 

1 The club also cements solidarity in tjie life of the professors, who meet, 
if only at lunch time, in a Faculty Club, present, under one or another 
name, in all the universities. All those who have taught at Harvard keep a 
pleasant memory of the Colonial Club. 



UNIVERSITIES 149 

ample of it in June, 1916, when the Massachusetts In- 
stitute of Technology celebrated its transfer to its new 
and magnificent buildings on the bank of Charles 
River. There were festivities of many kinds, to which 
each of the classes contributed its individual mani- 
festation, and they ended, as usual, with a banquet in 
Boston, of which more than 1,500 partook. In thirty- 
four cities of the United States, from New York to New 
Orleans, and to the great centres on the Pacific coast, 
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, at the same hour, 
the Tech Clubs were also gathered at banquets. At the 
hour for the toasts, the banqueters in all these cities 
could have the illusion of being at the Boston celebra- 
tion itself. With a telephone receiver at the ear, they 
were actually able to listen to the speeches delivered 
there and in Boston likewise, each of the banqueters 
could hear the greetings which were sent one after an- 
other from the various cities. The solidarity of the 
alumni, in this gathering of engineers, utilized the most 
modern means of manifesting itself. 

And lastly periodicals and reviews. Alumni Bulletin, 
Alumni Weekly, Graduates' Magazine, etc., at regular 
intervals, remind the alumni individually of university 
affairs, and keep them in the current of all the great or 
small events which concern them; put them in touch 
with the plans formed, the material needs; in a certain 
measure submit these projects for their approval and at 
the same time ask them for the means for their realiza- 
tion. That is a heritage of English customs, and an im- 
portant employment of private initiative, to which we 
cannot refuse our sincere and admiring approbation. 

The alumni, then, bring enormous support to the 
universities, and at the same time exercise an undeni- 



150 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

able influence over them. That does not mean that 
this influence is always beneficent. In their affection 
for Alma Mater, preoccupations of an intellectual order 
are not the most active. The mass of the alumni, es- 
pecially the most of those who can make sumptuous 
gifts, are not scholars, and the memories of their col- 
lege life are chiefly those which made these years a 
'*good time," for them. It is the joyous, sporting, and 
worldly side of college life whose tradition the alumni 
are anxious to maintain. The university must com- 
promise more or less with these tendencies, and devote 
a part of the resources which come to it, to increasing 
the luxury and agreeableness of the college, before 
thinking of the scientific needs. The universities which, 
like Johns Hopkins, have for themselves only the auster- 
ity of the intellectual task, do not attract a crowd of 
generous alumni. 

That is nothing more than purely human, and the 
fact is that the universities still find easily the means of 
realizing their most strictly scientific desiderata, either 
among their alumni, or among very rich men, who have 
no debt of gratitude toward them. One can find no 
more noble use of a fortune than to devote it, as Leland 
Stanford did, to founding a great university, in memory 
of his son. Andrew Carnegie and J. D. Rockefeller, 
merely to mention their names, and one might add 
many others, figure among the generous benefactors 
of numerous universities. Mr. Carnegie has been guided 
in all his largesses, by an undoubted and ardent desire 
to contribute, through the progress of education in all 
its stages, to the amelioration of human conditions. 
Mr. Rockefeller, in 1910, making a last donation ^ to 

1 Mr. Rockefeller's gifts to this university have reached in all, $25,000,000, 



UNIVERSITIES 151 

the University of Chicago, of which he was the princi- 
pal founder, announced at the same time that he was 
withdrawing his representatives from the council of her 
trustees, and he added: "I am acting from an initial 
and lasting conviction that this great institution, being 
the property of the people, should be controlled, con- 
ducted and sustained by them. I have merely had the 
privilege of cooperating in the generous efforts made for 
its building." The council of trustees, in accepting this 
last gift, declared that Mr. Rockefeller had never sought 
to use his influence, that he had never intervened for the 
nomination, promotion or recall of the professors, and 
that he had never made representations in respect to 
views expressed by them, even on religious questions, 
on which doctrines in formal opposition with his well- 
known views had been formulated. 

It may have happened that donors have sometimes 
applied a certain pressure to the universities. One may 
regret, not without reason, that individual wealth 
should be able to exercise so great an influence. But in 
my opinion it would be unjust to deny to this great 
movement of liberalities, from which American higher 
education profits, a broad foundation of idealism and 
public spirit. After the account is cast up, we must 
sincerely admire it, and consider very fortunate those 
customs which interest and associate in the life and 
management of the university, all those who have passed 
through its ranks, or whom fortune has favored. 



PART II 
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 



CHAPTER XIII 

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN THE UNIVERSITY 

Its conditions. Selection of the personnel, and the sciences. Mr. J. McK. 
Cattell's statistics and the distribution of the best American scientists. The 
scientific equipment: laboratories and libraries. The relation of research 
and teaching. 

THE first part of this book has shown us the Ameri- 
can universities under extremely varied aspects, 
yet there is one which we have barely touched upon. 
That is the one which it is everywhere agreed to con- 
sider essential, scientific research. We shall consider 
it now. 

And first, American intellectuals, especially scien- 
tific men, but also engineers, unanimously proclaim that 
of all the aims of the university, this is the supreme 
aim. The universities must, before all else, cause sci- 
ence to progress. "Research is the nervous system of 
the university," said Professor C. M. Coulter of Chi- 
cago, in a toast which I had the pleasure of hearing, 
April 15, 1916, at the banquet of the Philosophical 
Society. "It stimulates and dominates every other 
function. It makes the atmosphere of the university, 
even in the undergraduate division, differ from that of 
a college. It affects the whole attitude toward subjects 
and toward life. This devotion, not merely to the ac- 
quisition of knowledge, but chiefly to the advancement 
of knowledge for its own sake, is the peculiar possession 
of universities. . . . There must be an increasing de- 
termination to permit no other function to diminish its 

156 



156 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

opportunity, and to allow no method of administration 
to depress its spirit." ^ 

Research is, then, undoubtedly the ideal of the teach- 
ing staff of the American universities, and we are to 
examine in what measure it is realized. We have seen 
how vast and complex these universities are, and to how 
many divergent needs and traditions they respond. 
They are quite evidently not planned for research, 
which has made a place for itself in them recently. Is 
it favored or hindered by the general surroundings? 
Voices calling for a better adaptation are not lacking. 

They regret the large place which the college and 
college spirit still have. The professors are overbur- 
dened with courses, too much absorbed by pedagogical 
preoccupations and the routine work which the students 
give them. Neither sufficient freedom of mind, nor 
time, remains for them to devote themselves calmly to 
serious researches. The teaching itself undergoes the 
influence of the inferior level on which the students are 
who come to the university. The college life weighs too 
heavily on the university. That is what Mr. D. S. 
Jordan, former president of Leland Stanford, expressed 
in a striking manner, in an address given at Yale,^ in 
contrasting Yale College with Yale University. "We 
must," he said, "choose between the two conceptions: 
one, that of the college, a school for boys, with its foot- 
ball team, its glee club, and its crews; the other, that 
of the university, a school for men; and come out of 
the present transitional state. The glory of Yale, until 
now, has been Yale College; that of the future must be 
Yale University; but the two things in the same yard, 

1 Science, June 9, 1916, pp. 810-812. 

2 Science, March 19, 1909. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 157 

with the same teachers, the same disciphne, this con- 
dition can never be a finaUty." 

"The American university," says, moreover, Mr. A. 
G. Mayer, "today remains a hypertrophied college, 
and the conservation of the past is its ideal, rather than 
the revelation of the new truth. The professor in it is 
more and more overwhelmed by the pedagogical work. 
Since 1880 the universities have experienced an enor- 
mous material development, but disproportionate to 
their intellectual development. Large buildings and 
fine lawns may be necessary and are certainly desir- 
able, but a university consists, first of all, m a staff of 
eminent professors." 

"The American university," Mr. Schurman, the presi- 
dent of Cornell, says, further, from the same point of 
view, "is still in the state of expectancy or of promise. 
Its future is to be a great school of research." 

On the other hand, the experience of Johns Hopkins 
and of Clark University, show the almost insurmount- 
able difficulties in establishing, independently of the 
state, a university which shall be exclusively a school of 
advanced studies, and the American democracy does 
not yet like to subsidize institutions not having, at 
least in large part, immediate usefulness. 

It is therefore very certain that the present situation 
carries much that is unfavorable, but we must not fail 
to recognize the real advantages : first, that solid foun- 
dation in society which it gives to the university, 
whether through the college traditions and the active 
sympathies of the wealthy classes, or through the de- 
velopment of the university toward applied teaching 
and contact with all the realities of modern life. A 
university which is entirely devoted to pure science is 



158 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

isolated in its tendencies from the surrounding world, 
and does not enroll enough students. 

Pure science, and especially research, can be the 
work of only a small number of superior and disinter- 
ested intellects; these can be recruited with certainty 
only by a very wide selection. This selection gives good 
results when it is operated on large masses of individ- 
uals; it works badly if one operates on only a small 
number, as is the case every time that a faculty has 
limited itself to sciences purely speculative and without 
applications. 

Therefore, without giving the impression that it is 
perfect, I believe that in principle the actual constitu- 
tion of the American university, is not bad. It offers a 
very broad foundation, on which by working properly, 
you are in excellent condition for selecting the chosen 
few who will cause our knowledge to progress. What I 
personally saw at Harvard confirms me in this opinion. 
Evidently the selection is not easy to make, and one 
does not readily hit upon men of genius. "The making 
of a Darwin" is the title which Mr. D. S. Jordan gives 
to one of his presidential addresses to the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, ^ in which 
he proves, in brief, that the universities of his coun- 
try do not yet have the best recipe. For men of genius, 
the only useful and practical recipe, which is not too 
ambitious, is that the conditions of the environment 
shall not stifle them automatically. Systems of edu- 
cation should avoid this major defect, and for the rest, 
limit themselves to getting the best results from the 
average. 

In brief, moreover, in thirty years, which is a short 

1 Science, December 30, 1910, pp. 927-942. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 159 

time, the American universities have reahzed, from the 
pm*ely scientific point of view, enormous progress. The 
nimiber of doctorates, if it is not a datum of an abso- 
lutely decisive value, is nevertheless an important in- 
dication. ^ Apprenticeship in research, through the 
doctorate, seems to me equally satisfactory. Evidently, 
as Mr. Castle observes, the fabrication of theses fur- 
nishes only a rather feeble result for the general progress 
of science, but even there, selection continues to oper- 
ate, and can give only at rare intervals a really superior 
subject. 

It is rather through the examination of the personnel 
that one can appreciate the value of the universities 
from the scientific point of view. And it is not doubtful 
that this personnel, on the whole, makes a big effort 
toward research; that in thirty years it has improved 
enormously; and that today there exist several great 
scientific centres full of vitality and independent of one 
another. There are six hundred colleges; there cannot 
be so many centres of discoveries. Only a very small 
number can be set up. By placing oneself at the point 
of view of research, one can rather easily determine the 
most important universities. They are, moreover, 
those which are in a general way the most prosperous. 

The absolute autonomy of the universities, the ma- 
terial interest which they have in possessing as dis- 
tinguished a staff as possible, the freedom which the 
presidents enjoy in supplying it, result in the selection 
being made, for the most powerful universities, at least 
in a large measure, according to the real value of the 
individuals, and in this selection, scientific works come 
in for a rather large share. Competition between the 

1 Cf. tables, pp. 96 and 97. 



160 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

universities causes them automatically to hunt for the 
right man for the right place. 

Mr. J. McK. Cattell, professor of psychology at Co- 
lumbia, in his review, Science — which very faithfully 
reflects American university life, and particularly the 
scientific life — has published an interesting series of 
studies on the university teaching profession, which are 
distinguished by a democratic and very independent 
spirit. He has tried to apply statistical methods — 
perhaps sometimes with too much excess in detail — 
to the appraisal of individual merit, and to draw from 
the results obtained, judgments on the university en- 
vironment and indications concerning the reforms to be 
applied to it. He has thus sought to determine the 
thousand most distinguished scientists of the United 
States,^ and, these once known, to deduce a series of 
conclusions from their rise, from their distribution in 
the various universities, from the conditions of their 
career, etc. He puts into this thousand a number of 
representatives of each science proportional to the num- 
ber of workers in that science.^ For each science, he 
has asked ten leading representatives, specialists of au- 
thority, to classify the workers in their specialty in 
order of merit. This plebiscite related to 2481 names. 
In each science, the lists furnished have been combined 
in a general list, according to the averages, and applying 
the correction for error to the interpretation of the results. 

Of the 1000 names obtained, 126 are those of persons 
born outside the United States. The states which 

^ J. McK. Cattell, A Statistical Study of American Men of Science, Sci- 
ence, N. s., vol. xxiv, 2d half of 1906, and vol. xxxii, 2d half of 1910. 

2 The numbers are as follows: Chemistry 175, Physics and Zoology 150, 
Botany and Geology 100, Mathematics 80, Pathology 60, Astronomy and 
Psychology 50, Physiology 40, Anatomy 25, Anthropology 20. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 161 

furnish the most are Massachusetts (134), New York 
(183), Pennsylvania (66), Ohio (75), Connecticut (40). 
The percentage in relation to population is four times 
higher in Massachusetts than in Pennsylvania, and 
fifty times more than in many southern states. Let us 
see especially how these men are distributed in the 
diverse universities. Harvard had 66 in its personnel, 
Columbia 60, the University of Chicago 39, Cornell 33, 
Johns Hopkins 30, Berkeley, Cal. 27, Yale 26, Ann 
Arbor, Mich. 20, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
19, Madison, Wis. 18, The University of Pennsylvania 
17, Leland Stanford 16, Princeton 14, etc. About 500 
of the names are grouped in 18 establishments; 237 
took their fundamental studies at Harvard, 171 at 
Johns Hopkins, 93 at Yale, 78 at Columbia, 74 at 
Cornell.i 

By noting the position of the various names on the 
list, one can calculate the relative value of the whole of 
the staff for each science in the various universities or 
scientific establishments, and Mr. McK. Cattell has 
arrived at the classification which the table on p. 162 
summarizes (in which each number is the place occupied 
by the corresponding establishment). 

Here again, only a very relative importance must be 
attached to these figures. But on the whole they indi- 
cate in which institutions the diverse sciences are, in 
a general way, best represented. It puts in evidence, 
likewise in a general manner, the universities which are 
at the head: Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Yale, Johns 
Hopkins, Cornell, and among the state universities, 

1 In weighing these figures we must take account of the fact that certain 
universities are still very recent. Chicago and Leland Stanford, for example, 
have only been in existence for twenty-five years. 



162 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

those of Wisconsin, California, and Michigan. But we 
must not seek too precise a meaning in each of these 
figures. Moreover, being based on persons, this meaning 





1 
i 

1 


1 


6 


1 

1 


1 


1 

1 


1 


£ 


1 


1 


1 


1 


Harvard 


2 
1 
3 
4 

7 

6 

5 

8 

10 
9 


1 
5 
6 

4 
8 


4 
10 

7 
2 
5 
6 

8 
9 

1 
3 


3 
1 
6 
5 

9 
10 

8 

2 

4 


3 

4 
10 

2 
8 

7 

6 
9 

6 
1 


1 
4 

10 
5 

7 
6 

3 
9 

2 


1 
3 

2 
6 

5 

10 

7 

8 
9 

4 


1 
5 

2 
3 
9 

8 

7 

4 


2 
10 

7 

1 
9 
3 
5 

4 


1 
3 
4 

2 

7 

6 

10 

5 


3 

.. 
2 

•■ 

6 

5 
8 

.. 
1 

6 


9, 


Chicago. 


5 




1 


Yale 




Johns Hopkins 

Cornell 


4 


Pennsylvania 




Michigan 

Illinois 


1 


7 
2 

9 




Wisconsin. . 


8 


California 

! oStanford 

1^ Clark 

i ^ Mass. Inst. Technology 

^"'^T^S-''' Bureau ^aJi^i§s5 

J^-5>^^ Department of Agriculture . . 

Carnegie Institution 

Smithsonian Institute 

Geological Survey 

N. Y. Botanical Gardens. . . . 

Am. Mus. Natural History. . 

Rockefeller Institute 

Wistar Institution 


9 
3 



would be only momentary. Besides, particular condi- 
tions intervene for each science; such is the existence 
of great observatories for astronomy. 

As far as regards zoology, this table seems to me to 
represent the reality in the measure in which it can do 
so, granted that each personality disappears behind the 
group of all those who compose the department. For 
this science, and also for general biology, I will add that 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 16S 

the American universities are actually in very good 
condition; that they have produced, of late years, many 
very remarkable works. Those of Mr. Edmund Wilson, 
of Columbia, on cytology, for example, are of the first 
order. From them has come the determination of sex 
as a function of the chromosomes. Comparative em- 
bryology has been the object of extremely precise re- 
searches (on cell-lineage), among which must be cited 
in the front rank those of Mr. E. Conklin of Princeton. 
We owe to Mr. R. G. Harrison of Yale very remarkable 
works in experimental embryology, which, in particu- 
lar, have led to the culture of tissues in vitro. The 
researches of Mr. T. H. Morgan of Columbia, on Men- 
delian heredity and mutations in Drosophila, are of 
capital interest at the present hour. Messrs. Calkins 
of Columbia and Woodruff of Yale, have brought 
about important progress in the biology of Infusoria, 
and in the general problems raised by the question of 
their senescence. At New York, we should mention 
several other names, like those of Messrs. B. Dean, H. 
Crampton, and Charles Stockard. At Chicago, the 
work of Messrs. F. R. LiUie, Tower, Child, Newman, 
and Patterson; at Harvard, those of Messrs. Mark, 
Parker, Wheeler, and Castle; at Johns Hopkins those of 
Mr. Jennings, constitute remarkable contributions in 
very diverse directions. And one might add many 
other names to those which I have just mentioned. I 
do not know whether, at the present time, many other 
countries could furnish an equivalent. 

Physiology, botany, ^ geology, seem to me to lead to 

1 One can judge them in a certain measure from the list of physiologists 
and botanists forming a part of the National Academy of Sciences. See 
note p. 224. 



164 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

similar conclusions. I am not competent enough to 
formulate a precise conclusion in each of the other 
sciences. 

The development of research in the universities de- 
pends on two chief factors : the men who can inspire it 
and the equipment to carry it out. The first is a neces- 
sary condition, the second, though but an aid, never- 
theless is very important. Pasteur and Claude Bernard 
made discoveries which revolutionized biology, under 
deplorable conditions of equipment, with slight material 
resources, and almost without co-workers to help them. 
On the other hand, it is not rare to see sumptuous labo- 
ratories from which nothing comes forth, for lack of 
creative inspiration. But we must not for that dis- 
count the importance and value of equipment. If, at 
the period of their greatest productivity, Pasteur and 
Claude Bernard had had abundant material resources, 
as moreover they insistently demanded, their work 
would have been far from suffering from it, and more 
than one idea, arrested in the germ state, would with- 
out doubt have ripened. 

In America at the present time, the equipment is not 
at fault, and in certain sciences at least, men of ability 
are not lacking. But it is certain that the material re- 
sources have developed much more rapidly than in- 
dividuals of ability. In a country as rich as the United 
States, and in which the wealthy classes take an effec- 
tive interest in the universities, it is easier to build and 
equip a laboratory than to find a director of the first 
order for it. Every university aspires to develop as 
much as possible, and to attract the maximum number 
of students. For that, it tries to strike the imagination 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 165 

by vast well-equipped buildings which are a tangible 
argument, for the public. 

The luxury and extent of this material equipment, 
from the confession of many Americans, are often ex- 
cessive, especially for establishments of second rank. 
The mark of the spirit of bigness, which impregnates 
contemporary American thought, is on them. 

Harvard does not deserve that reproach. Its present 
scientific laboratories are, rather, too modest, and call 
for development and modernization in general, except, 
however, those of its magnificent Medical School, 
built a few years ago. The natural history laboratories 
were still housed, last year,^ in the Museum of Compara- 
tive Zoology, founded by Louis Agassiz, and also bear- 
ing his name. The finest zoological laboratories I 
have had occasion to visit, are that of Princeton, di- 
rected by Mr. E. Conklin, that of Philadelphia (Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania), directed by Mr. McClung, 
and especially that of Yale, directed by Mr. R. G. Har- 
rison. These various laboratories are less than ten 
years old. Those of the University of Chicago, also 
recent, are likewise very well equipped. The laboratory 
of zoology at Philadelphia, very carefully planned by 
the late lamented Professor Thomas Montgomery, 
served as a good model for that of Yale (Osborn Memo- 
rial Laboratory). There are all the resources desirable 
for teaching and research, in the various branches of 
zoology (comparative anatomy, cytology, embryology, 
protistology, physiology). They have not neglected 

^ Those of Botany and Zoology are to be moved this year into another 
building. Pierce Hall, hitherto occupied by the Engineering School, which 
has been released by moving these courses into the new Massachusetts In- 
stitute of Technology in accordance with an agreement between Harvard 
and the institution. 



166 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

equipment for keeping living animals (acquariums, 
vivariums, inseetariums, hot-houses). These labora- 
tories have open spaces, into which they can be ex- 
tended, and which permit experiments in the open air. 
They have rooms with constant temperature, and equip- 
ment for cold. They are constructed so as to be as far 
as possible free from danger of fire. The cupboards, 
shelves, book stacks in the libraries, according to a 
usage growing more and more general in America, are 
of steel. They are very well arranged as to light and 
ventilation. 

The zoological section of the Osborn Memorial Labo- 
ratory at Yale cost $1,500,000, not including the 
instruments. I had the personal satisfaction — though 
very platonic — of seeing that the plan of this excel- 
lent plant answered very exactly the outline of the 
needs which I had set forth for the new laboratory of 
Evolution at the Sorbonne, which would be finished 
today were it not for the war; the credit at my disposal 
was too modest for me to think of realizing such a 
program so completely. 

Certain universities are well developed for the appli- 
cations of biology to agriculture, and for the related 
parts of zoology. Such, among others, are Cornell Uni- 
versity at Ithaca, N. Y., the University of Illinois at 
Urbana, and that of California at Berkeley. Harvard, 
which had, at Forest Hills, near Boston, one of the 
oldest agricultural schools, Bussey Institution, trans- 
formed it, a few years ago, into an institution of ex- 
perimental biology, devoted especially to the study of 
Mendelian heredity in animals and plants,^ and also to 

1 Professors W. E. Castle and E. M. East have made some very impor- 
tant researches there. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 167 

forest biology. These various establishments for agri- 
cultural biology, the experimental study of heredity, or 
entomology, as applied to agriculture, are very interest- 
ing, and without equivalent in France. I cannot deal 
at length with it here, and moreover you will find a very 
precise description of them in the fine book recently 
pubhshed by M. Paul Marchal.^ after the journey on 
which he studied the scientific organization of the 
Bureau of Entomology of the Department of Agricul- 
ture (see below). 

Without any doubt, remarks of the same kind could 
be made for the laboratories of sciences other than 
zoology. In all, they have been enormously developed 
in twenty-five years, and certain of these laboratories 
have magnificent plants and endowments. 

It is especially well known how powerful is the 
equipment of the American observatories, such as that 
of the University of Chicago (Yerkes Observatory), 
and that of California (Lick Observatory). 

Besides laboratories, we must not forget the collec- 
tions and museums, in the equipment of the universi- 
ties. Harvard has a celebrated Museum of Comparative 
Zoology, founded about 1860 by L. Agassiz, enriched 
by numerous expeditions, in particular by the oceano- 
graphic explorations of Alexander Agassiz. In botany 
it has the herbarium of Asa Gray (Gray Herbarium), 
containing today more than 540,000 leaves, and in- 
stalled, since 1909, at the Botanical Garden, in a speci- 
ally constructed building, with hbrary (26,000 volumes, 
and pamphlets), drying rooms, files of photographs, 
laboratory, workrooms and lecture rooms, all of fire- 
proof materials. Harvard also owns a magnificent col- 

^ P. Marchal, loc, cit. 



168 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

lection of trees, the Arnold Arboretum, near the Bussey 
Institution, covering more than 225 acres. The mu- 
seums of mineralogy and geology, of ethnography (Pea- 
body Museum), are no less rich, and these collections 
are constantly growing, thanks to gifts or bequests of 
special collections made by professors and specialists. 
Finally, of the rapidly growing riches of the Ameri- 
can universities the most remarkable is their libraries. 
This is the number ^ of volumes in the most important 
libraries in 1913-14 (not including pamphlets). 

Harvard 1,200,000 Princeton 320,000 

Yale 1,000,000 California 300,000 

Columbia 550,000 Illinois 300,000 

Cornell 440,000 Leland Stanford 230,000 

Chicago 430,000 Wisconsin 207,000 

Pennsylvania 421,000 Minnesota 187,000 

Ohio 350,000 Johns Hopkins 183,000 

Michigan 337,000 

Twelve others exceed 100,000 volumes, and many are 
those which have between 50,000 and 100,000. 

There too. Harvard comes at the head, and its li- 
brary building, the H. E. Widener Memorial, deserves 
special mention. It has just been built and was opened 
for the year 1915-16. The stacks, almost entirely of 
metal, have a dozen stories and a capacity of about 
3,000,000 volumes. Sixty professors have individual 
rooms in direct contact with the stacks, and can receive 
their students there. Besides, 300 cubicles, supplied 
with tables, are arranged in the stacks to permit gradu- 
ate students who have special authorization, to work 
near the shelves. It is open from nine o'clock in the 
morning to ten o'clock in the evening. A printed card 

1 Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1913-14. Cf. p. 162. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 169 

catalogue is complete and easy to consult. The librarian 
has at his disppsal more than one hundred employees. 
On the top floor, thirty-four working rooms, with special 
libraries of books in current use, are arranged for the 
work of the students in each of the divisions or depart- 
ments (Mathematics, French, German, Sanskrit, etc.). 
This library includes only the general collection of 
books of Harvard College, or actually about 675,000 
volumes and 433,000 pamphlets. Besides, about 60,000 
volumes are scattered in the various laboratories. Fi- 
nally, about 450,000 volumes more, and 270,000 pam- 
phlets constitute special libraries belonging to diverse 
parts of the university. ^ 

Department Volumes Pamphlets 

Library of Theology 106,780 50,944 

Arnold Arboretum ~ 30,320 7,143 

Astronomical Observatory 14,586 34,818 

Meteorological Observatory 3,204 15,067 

Bussey Institution 3,284 16,067 

Dental School 2,228 10,000 

Gray Herbarium 15,953 10,672 

Law School 161,734 21,989 

Medical School 27,000 46,067 

Museum of Comparative Zoology 52,336 49,219 

Peabody Museum of Ethnography 6,328 6,439 

I was myself able to test in how practical a fashion 
this great library is planned, and how liberal and con- 
venient its regulations are. I could also note, for zoology 
and the natural sciences, that duplications are as limited 
as possible, and how much real wealth the large number 
of volumes consequently means. 

The various preceding notes attest the breadth of 
equipment of the great American universities, and they 

1 A. C. Potter, The Library of Harvard University, 3d ed., 1915. 



170 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

are particularly impressive when one looks backward 
and measures the road covered in thirty years. 

The question, then, which is put as to the future, is 
to know whether research will become more and more 
independent, in what measure it will separate itself 
from the college foundation, whether in any case it 
really tends to do so, and what will be the resultant of 
the diverse influences in play. 

A solution for the existing difficulties might be the 
formation, in the very bosom of the universities, of well- 
equipped laboratories of pure research (the endowment 
remaining applicable for research in a large number of 
university laboratories is small) . If it is essential that 
teaching should be in an atmosphere of research, that 
does not exclude the existence of certain parts of the 
university in which research should reign exclusively. 
Foundations of this kind are beginning to develop. 
The maritime stations, the observatories, are more or 
less in this position. At Harvard the Wolcott Gibbs 
Laboratory has recently been created, thanks to gifts, 
specially planned for research in physical chemistry, 
and directed by Professor T. W. Richards, who was 
awarded the Nobel Prize in 1915. Senator Vilas has 
bequeathed to the University of W^isconsin, the neces- 
sary sums to create ten chairs of pure research, without 
routine work, in which the salary of the professors, 
which is to be $10,000, would attract men of worth. 
There is a very clear tendency to create special institu- 
tions of research for each science, of which different 
countries possess more or less numerous examples. 
The Pasteur Institute of Paris was one of the proto- 
types. Germany, in the years which preceded the war. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 171 

was systematically creating great institutions of this 
kind, under the auspices of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesell- 
schaft. 

In my opinion, that is one of the essential forms of 
the organization which is required. At present, and in 
the years which preceded the war, the public powers, 
in France, did not give sufficient attention to it. They 
had too much superstition for the chair and for oral 
teaching. 1 

In the United States it seems that the institutions 
for pure research have won their cause froni henceforth. 

C. S. Minot, professor of embryology in the Harvard 
Medical School, who was teaching as exchange pro- 
fessor in the University of Berlin in 1911-12, expressed, 
in his opening lecture,^ the idea that America was about 
to enter extensively on this path, and he divided the 
history of higher education in his country into three 
periods; that of the colleges, which is past, that of the 
universities, which is the present, and that of the spe- 
cial institutions for research, which is beginning. The 
United States already has, in fact, a rather large num- 
ber of institutions of this kind, either attached to the 
universities and more or less autonomous, or completely 
independent. The most important we shall pass now in 
review. 

^ Cf . M. Caullery, L'fivolution de notre enseignement superieur scienti- 
fique. Revue du mois, vol., iv, 1907. 
2 Science^ December 6, 1912. 



CHAPTER XIV 

INSTITUTES OF RESEARCH 

1. Research in the service of industry. The Mellon Institute at Pittsburgh. 

2. Wistar Institute at Philadelphia. 3. The biological stations: Wood's 
Hole, Bermuda, San Diego (Scripps Institution for biological research). 

1. Mellon Institute at Pittsburgh Research 
IN THE Service of Industry 

THE Mellon Institute for Industrial Research, at Pitts- 
burgh, founded ^ve or six years ago, is of an entirely 
new type, and deserves to hold our attention quite 
specially. 

It is an establishment for pure research, but attached 
to a university, that of Pittsburgh, while keeping to it- 
self its own particular board of trustees and constitu- 
tion and a very great autonomy. It was established, 
thanks to a gift of $500,000, made in 1913, by the 
brothers A. W. and R. B. Mellon; of which sum 
$250,000 was devoted to construction, $60,000 to the 
purchase of apparatus, $20,000 to the library. The 
buildings were dedicated in 1915. But the institute 
had been at work in provisional quarters since 1914. 

The plan of this institute is simple and fertile. A 
manufacturer has a problem to solve, requiring scientific 
resea;rches for which he has neither laboratories and 
equipment, nor the necessary men. He turns over to 
the Mellon Institute a definite sum to have the research 
in question undertaken by a competent scientist, whom 
the Institute undertakes to find. The Institute fur- 
nishes its laboratories and general equipment. The 

172 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 173 

specialist chosen works under the direction of the In- 
stitute; he signs a regular contract; his researches are 
secret, and their results are the property of the donor 
of the subvention. With such an organization, manu- 
facturers are spared the general expenses of a perma- 
nent scientific equipment, and the greater difficulties of 
securing a stable personnel of scientists. 

The workers thus engaged by the Institute take the 
name of fellows; each foundation is a fellowship. They 
are essentially temporary, with regard to the probable 
length of the researches, one, two, or three years. 

The laboratory is equipped for researches in physics 
and chemistry, especially electro-chemistry and physi- 
cal chemistry. It has general rooms, equipped with 
boilers, electric furnaces, and for experiments at a low 
temperature, and individual rooms for each fellow. Its 
creation belongs especially to the great movement, 
largely accentuated since the war, which has in view 
the development of chemical industry in the United 
States and freeing it in many of its divisions, from the 
monopoly de facto held by Germany. 

From its foundation, manufacturers have under- 
stood the value of this institution. The Institute 
already has a budget of $150,000. In 1914, even before 
the opening of the permanent building, thirty fellow- 
ships were active; some of them require the collabora- 
tion of several persons. The subjects bear on problems 
with which the most varied industries are concerned, 
smoke-consuming devices, baking, utilization of fruit 
pulps, hardening fats, high potentials and chemical 
reactions, turbines, crude petroleum, manufacture of 
food products, fertilizers, cements, radiators, glassware, 
natural gas, soaps, metallurgy of brass, yeasts, fertiliz- 



174 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

ers, etc. Naturally the exact nature of the questions 
studied is not published. The subscriptions amounted 
to $183,000; and for the current year, the total sub- 
scribed for researches was $97,400. A company of ten 
fellows were engaged on smoke-consuming devices, 
representing varied specialties, engineers, electricians, 
a meteorologist, a botanist and a bacteriologist. This 
fellowship alone was provided for three years with sub- 
sidies of $12,500, $15,000 and $12,000. 

In a large number of contracts a bonus is promised 
the fellows, once their research is ended, over and 
above their regular allowances, which bonus in certain 
cases reaches $10,000, or a percentage on the industrial 
exploitation of the process studied. Certain of the fel- 
lows have already entered, at the expiration of their 
researches, into the companies for which they had 
worked. 

This mode of association of science and industry ^ seems 
to me extremely flexible and practical. It may greatly 
stimulate young workers; it spares manufacturers 
enormous general expenses, and permits them to engage 
in research on a problem, with a clearly limited budget. 
The facts, moreover, seem to assure, from henceforth, 
the success of this foundation. 

2. The Wistar Institute at Philadelphia 

The Wistar Institute ^ is devoted exclusively to 
scientific research, and especially to anatomy and em- 
bryology. It bears the name of a professor of anatomy 
in the University of Pennsylvania at the beginning of 

1 Cf. Science, May 8, 1914, p. 672, and March 19, 1915, p. 418. 

2 Cf. Bull. no. 5 of the Wistar Institute (Organization and Work of the 
W. I.). 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 175 

the nineteenth century, and the generosity of a grand 
nephew of this scientist, General J. Wistar, made its 
building possible and assured its endowment. 

Wistar Institute is attached to the University of 
Pennsylvania, which elects annually its board of man- 
agers, to the number of nine. Its scientific staff is 
formed of about ten persons. An advisory board sug- 
gests questions it would be desirable to study in the 
laboratories. 

This institution is about twenty years old. It has 
research laboratories, which have tried to be above all 
as completely equipped a centre as possible for the 
study of the brain and neurology. 

The institute is at the same time a publishing centre 
for the journals of morphology: Anatomical Record, 
American Journal of Anatomy, Journal of Morphology, 
Journal of Experimental Zoology, Journal of Compara- 
tive Neurology. 

Finally, they have tried to make of it a centre of 
organization for anatomical work (preparation of ma- 
terials, organization of means of demonstration). 

3. The Biological Stations 

The Laboratory of Marine Biology at Wood's Hole. 

As in other countries, marine biology has been, in 
the United States, in the last forty years, one of the 
parts of science in which research has been best co- 
ordinated with teaching, and has caused the rise of the 
most institutes for research. The chief establishment 
of this kind, in America, is the Wood's Hole laboratory 
at the southern extremity of Massachusetts, in Vine- 
yard Sound, not far from the tip of Nantucket. 



176 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

There are, in reality, two distinct biological labora- 
tories at Wood's Hole, one belonging to the Federal 
bureau of Fisheries, and forming part of the great 
scheme of governmental scientific services, to which I 
shall return later; the other independent, which plays 
a great part in the scientific life of the United States. 

Marine biology owed its rise, in America, in large part 
to Louis and Alexander Agassiz. Under their influence, 
more or less ephemeral stations were first created. In 
1888 they were stabilized at Wood's Hole. At present 
a certain number of universities and colleges are as- 
sociated to organize there a well-equipped laboratory. 
One of the best American zoologists, Charles O. Whit- 
man, once professor at the University of Chicago has 
been its soul. This laboratory has been a centre of 
attraction to which each year the greater part of the 
most distinguished biologists of the various universities 
have come to work; a significant example to contrast 
with the sterilizing dispersion which has been our rule 
in the matter of zoological stations, as in other things. 

Thus little by little. Wood's Hole has become a sort of 
summer capitol of American biology. A large number 
of zoologists, physiologists and even botanists bought 
lands there and each built a cottage. Now, from June 
to September, there is a veritable congress, more and 
more numerous, of men like E. B. Wilson, T. H. Morgan, 
J. Loeb, F. R. Lillie, R. S. Lillie, H. H. Newman, W. 
Patton, H. V. Crampton, G. N. Calkins, G. Drew, Ed- 
ward G. Conklin, G. Lefevre, C. McClung, A. P. Mat- 
thew, G. T. Moore, etc., without counting less regular 
guests. 

I saw this city of biologists only in May, when they 
had not yet come, and unfortunately I could not avail 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 177 

myself of the invitation which they had given me to 
come and see it during the vacation period. 

For a long time Wood's Hole has consisted only of 
wooden buildings, laboratories and club houses, for the 
material organization of life is never lacking side by 
side with the intellectual equipment. Although many 
universities and colleges were associated to bring it into 
being and to sustain it, the existence of the Wood's 
Hole station was rather precarious. But a few years 
ago, a Chicago benefactor, related to some biologists, 
Mr. C. R. Crane, came to consolidate the present and 
even the future. Thanks to his gifts, the research lab- 
oratory has been rebuilt of brick and equipped in a 
complete fashion (aquariums, circulation of water, in- 
struments, library), for experienced investigators; 
forty to fifty can work there comfortably. At the 
same time, Mr. Crane has assured the establishment 
an annual budget which the subsidies of the institu- 
tions which send workers there complete. Besides, the 
station derives about $15,000 from the sale of marine 
animals to the various universities for the needs of 
their practical teaching. Thanks to these various re- 
sources, which together exceed $30,000, Wood's Hole 
now has its existence assured, a sufficient equipment, 
a good fleet, and a permanent staff. Mr. G. Drew, who 
is resident naturalist, has put it in excellent form. The 
general direction of the institution is entrusted to Mr. 
F. R. Lillie, a professor at the University of Chicago. 

Wood's Hole has been, and remains, at the same time, 
a centre of teaching. The old wooden buildings remain 
and are reserved for the young workers,^ or for students 
who come there for instruction. Every year theoretical 

1 A workroom for the season costs $100. 



178 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

and practical courses are organized in a very precise 
way for six weeks, from June 15 to the first days of 
August, on the diverse branches of biology (compara- 
tive anatomy, embryology, physiology, general biology, 
botany). Excursions complement them, and the whole 
forms a very methodical introduction to the marine 
fauna and flora. ^ 

It will be noted that nothing is free, even in matters 
of pure science, in America. (University extension and 
Chautauqua teaching, besides, though works of popular 
usefulness, pay for themselves.) This system can be 
criticized, but it has as a consequence that all the tasks 
undertaken are carried out seriously, or are dropped 
early. Success is lasting only if the paying participants 
are satisfied. There are too many things in France 
which are free, but carried out in too insufficient a 
fashion, and the general feeling of false shame at accept- 
ing or asking for a return for certain exceptional serv- 

^ These courses are given by professors or assistants from the various 
universities. Enrollment costs $50 for each. Here are some figures, relative 
to the attendance at Wood's Hole during late years. 



1911 



1912 



1913 



1914 



1915 



Investigators 

(zoologists . . . 
physiologists, 
botanists. . . 

zoblogists 

physiologists. . 

botanists 

Students 

Zoologists 

Emeryologist 

Physiolo^st 

Botanists 

Totals 



147 



180 



122 
58 
17 
11 
21 
7 
7 
69 
33 
22 



191 



127 
50 
22 
10 
31 
1 
3 
89 
43 
21 
10 
15 



216 



137 



105 
47 
37 
15 



242 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 179 

ices is certainly bad from the point of view of the 
collective interest. 

Lectures, too, are given at Wood's Hole, and they 
were the origin of the Biological Bulletin of the Wood's 
Hole Marine Laboratory, today one of the most interest- 
ing biological periodicals of the United States, which 
contains, in preliminary form, a considerable number of 
works, and of very varied subjects. 

Wood's Hole offers us, then, another new example of 
the realization of great scientific institutions through 
private initiative and the spirit of cooperation. The 
property of the station belongs today to the corporation 
of all those who contributed to the foundation, or more 
than 300 persons, individuals or collectivities; its ad- 
ministration is entrusted to a board, composed of rep- 
resentatives of the various branches of biology. As 
Mr. F. R. Lillie remarked, in July, 1914, at the dedica- 
tion of the new building, it answers a very democratic 
conception: "Freedom of organization," he said, "is 
one of our mottoes; cooperation is the other. Both 
are essential and inseparable. In freedom similar in- 
terests cooperate naturally, and as long as they respect 
the freedom. . . . The property and the control of 
this laboratory are in the hands of those who use it, 
and that is the essence of a democratic organization." 

Other Biological Stations. Bermuda, San Diego 

I shall place beside the data on the Wood's Hole 
station, some concerning the other biological stations, 
without pretense to completeness. 

The Federal Bureau of Fisheries, as has been said 
above, has a laboratory of its own at Wood's Hole, 
quite near, but absolutely independent of the one which 



180 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

has just been described. The two stations have, how- 
ever, often helped one another in various ways. The 
Fisheries station has been directed especially toward 
biological research which pertains to the fish industry. 
The steamer Albatross, which is assigned to it, has been 
placed at the disposal of Alexander Agassiz several 
times, for his great submarine explorations in the sea 
of the Antilles and the Pacific. 

The Bureau of Fisheries has another station for 
marine biology at Beaufort, N. C, and is estabhshing 
a third at Key West, at the southern point of Florida, 
to study the subtropical fauna of the Gulf Stream and 
of the depths which it covers. It is at present planning 
a fourth on the Pacific. It has, besides, established a 
fresh water biological station on the Mississippi at 
Fairport, Iowa. These various stations are open to all 
qualified scientists. 

There is a biological station at the Tortugas Islands 
in southern Florida. I shall have occasion to speak of it 
in connection with the Carnegie Institution. 

Harvard University has established an interesting 
biological station in Bermuda, and I had the pleasure 
of being its guest for a few days. It is modestly in- 
stalled on an islet, Agar's Island, in unused buildings 
of the EngKsh naval station. The Bermudas offer the 
naturalist a very rich fauna, extremely interesting for 
its subtropical character. The lagoons which surround 
the actual islands are enclosed within coral reefs, which 
shelter the brilliant fauna usual to these formations. 
The land is no less interesting than the sea. The few 
days which I passed at this station are numbered 
among my best memories as a zoologist. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 181 

The project which should have been realized in the 
Bermudas was vaster. Several universities were to 
have cooperated, likewise the local authorities. But 
this association has not yet been realized. 

On the Pacific I had an opportunity to visit the bio- 
logical station at San Diego, attached to the University 
of California, and I received there the cordial hospital- 
ity of its director. Professor W. E. Ritter. This station 
is situated a little north of the rapidly growing town of 
La JoUa, about fifteen miles from San Diego. Its official 
name is Scripps Institution for Biological research. 
Again, it is the generosity of benefactors, Mr. and Miss 
Scripps, which has assured its rapid and considerable 
development. 

Of five planned, two large buildings are already con- 
structed; the first dates from 1909, the second was to 
be dedicated a few weeks after my visit, and is later 
destined to be a library. The station is located on a 
very fine site, on the seashore, on which it abuts for 
nearly half a mile, and its lands cover one hundred and 
seventy-five acres. It has a very fine wharf, especially 
constructed for the use of its fleet. ^ 

Its administrative constitution also is impressed with 
a very great spirit of liberalism. It is attached to the 
University of California (more than twenty hours by 
rail from San Diego), which is a state university, but 
it has as large an autonomy as possible. It is directly 
managed by its hoard of directors, which includes its 
director, the permanent members of its scientific staff, 

1 See W. E. Ritter, The Marine Biological Station of San Diego, Its 
History, Present Condition, Achievements, and Aims. Univ. of California 
Publications, Zoology, 1, ix, no. 4, 1912. 



182 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

and the donors, Mr. and Miss Scripps. The most im- 
portant decisions are submitted for ratification to the 
Board of Regents of the University. Here also, as at 
Wood's Hole, and contrary to what happens in the 
universities, the scientific staff has a large place in the 
effective management of the institution. 

The program of this station has been considerably 
broadened. At first they had in view only the study of 
marine fauna. Today the general relations between the 
marine fauna and the flora and the conditions of the 
environment are the principal object. This includes 
almost all Oceanography. The station purposes to 
study the problems of the same order for the terrestrial 
fauna, thanks to the advantages of the land which it 
has. Mr. Sumner has undertaken, with this intent, 
very interesting researches on the variations of Rodents 
of the American West, belonging to the genus Peromys- 
cus. The director, Mr. W. E. Ritter, is animated with 
the noblest enthusiasm, and with the desire to contrib- 
ute, through the scientific work of this station, to 
general progress. The Scripps Institution is essentially 
a research laboratory, but as at Wood's Hole, they have 
organized temporary instruction, in the summer, chiefly 
for the students of the University of California. Pop- 
ular lectures are also given. ^ 

^ Several biological stations are now being created in the northwestern 
states, Oregon and Washington, on the Pacific Coast. 

This would also be the place to speak of the botanical gardens, some of 
which are very large — New York's, at Bronx Park, has more than two hun- 
dred and fifty acres; the Missouri Botanical Garden, at St. Louis, has six 
hundred and twenty-five — and of the great zoological gardens. For the 
last named, see G. Loisel, Archives Missions Scientif. et Litter. 

The great national parks (there are twenty of them at present), in which 
nature is rigorously respected, would also furnish admirable biological sta- 
tions. But they have not yet been utilized in this way. 



CHAPTER XV 

INSTITUTES FOR RESEARCH 

The Carnegie Institution of Washington. Its organization. Its various 
departments. The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research at New 
York. 

1. The Carnegie Institution of Washington 

A/TR. ANDREW CARNEGIE has devoted almost 
-^ -*- all his immense fortune to philanthropic works, 
and above all, to educational works, the latter being, 
for him, the fundamental factor in social progress. One 
of his great foundations is intended to reward acts of 
heroism; it is well-known and does not come within 
the plan of this work. We spoke above of the Carnegie 
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 

Finally, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, is 
intended to facilitate pure scientific research. We will 
glance summarily at its organization. 

Its headquarters are at Washington and it is directed 
by a president, Mr. R. Woodward, and a board of 
trustees including twenty-four members; scientists, like 
Messrs. S. Flexner, C. D. Walcott, Welsh, etc.; busi- 
ness men, financiers, or men prominent in politics, like 
Mr. Elihu Root. ... It was founded in 1902; in 
1912 it had received from Mr. Carnegie $22,000,000, 
invested at five per cent. So it has an income of about 
$1,000,000. Its aim is to encourage research in the 
broadest and most liberal manner, with a view to the 
discovery and application of science to the amelioration 
of human conditions. The means is, "to discover the 



184 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

exceptionally endowed men in all specialties, whatever 
may be their origin, whether they are in the schools or 
outside, and to give them the necessary financial aid 
in order to permit them to accomplish the work for 
which they seem specially designed." Indeed Mr. Car- 
negie likes to say that his personal successes are due to 
the fact that he knew how to find and put at the head of 
his enterprises, men better endowed than himself. 

The organization is composed of an administrative 
division and a publication division, both at Washington, 
of a series of laboratories created by the institution at 
diverse points, and finally of subsidies given to various 
scientists, working in universities or in other estab- 
lishments. 

Actually the Carnegie Institution has created ten 
special research departments, listed below, with the 
sums which were devoted to them in 1913. 

1. Department of botanical researches $37,905 

2. Experimental station of researches on evolution 37,477 

3. Geophysical laboratory 75,000 

4. Marine biological station, Tortugas Islands 18,000 

5. Department of southern hemisphere astrometry 26,316 

6. Nutrition laboratory 48,539 

7. Mount Wilson Solar Observatory, California 254,075 

8. Department of terrestrial magnetism 97,810 

9. Department of economic and sociological sciences. . . . 12,500 
10. Department of historical researches 12,500 

The total grants to these departments, which were 
$649,222 in 1913, were $732,000 in 1914. Let us see 
rapidly how each of them is constituted. 

Department of botanical researches. — It is composed 
of a laboratory of desert biology, estabhshed in 1905, 
at Tucson, Arizona, and directed by Mr. D. T. Mac- 
Dougal. At Tucson, it has over nine hundred acres of 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 185 

land, and reserves in the mountains besides; it has as 
an annex, several experimental stations, situated at 
diverse points of the southwestern desert, at altitudes 
between sea-level (Carmel, Salton Sea, Cal.), and seven 
thousand eight hundred feet (Santa Catalina, Ariz.). 
These laboratories have published important studies on 
vegetable chemistry, on the relations of plants to water, 
the distribution and dissemination of desert plants. It 
is certainly one of the most original establishments for 
botanical research in existence. It lends itself to re- 
searches, not only on plants, but also on animals. Mr. 
W. L. Tower of Chicago carried out in part there his 
important researches on the Chrysomelidae (Lepti- 
molarsa) . 

The experimental station for researches on evolution is 
located at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, quite near 
New York, and it is directed by Mr. C. B. Davenport, 
who received me there with the greatest kindness. It 
occupies two acres of land, and includes various zoolog- 
ical and botanical laboratories, an insectarium, etc. 
Heredity, variation, the determination of sex, and the 
various problems of general biology, whether on plants 
or animals, are especially studied there. The equip- 
ment permits studies on various animals, or vegetable 
species. The staff of the station includes, besides the 
director, Mr. Davenport, various scientists, such as 
Mr. O'Riddle, who is continuing Mr. Whitman's re- 
searches on the determination of sex in pigeons, Mr. 
Blakeslee, well-known for his works on the sexuality of 
the Mucorineae, Mr. Banta, Mr. Goodale, the botanist 
Shull, etc.^ 

^ Mr. Davenport also directs an institution independent of the preceding, 
and of the Carnegie Institution, although established in the immediate 



186 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

The geophysical laboratory is located at Washington, 
and directed by Mr. A. L. Day. Researches of con- 
siderable importance for the knowledge of the formation 
of the earth's crust have come from it. A flood of new 
light has been thrown on the genesis of the siliceous 
rocks and the formation of their elements, in particular 
of the whole series of feldspaths, has been explained by 
the laws of physical chemistry. What especially char- 
acterizes the activity of the laboratory is that it is 
working on a vast program in a methodical manner, 
coordinating the endeavors of the scientists who belong 
to it. It is a fine example of team work. Mr. Day and 
his collaborators have made, in these last years, some 
remarkable observations on the lava flows of the vol- 
cano Kilauea in the Hawaiian islands, and in particular 
on the presence of water vapor in these lava flows. 

The geophysical laboratory, through the importance 
of the results which have come from it, and through its 
equipment, is an establishment today unique in its 
specialty. It is certainly one of the most convincing 
examples of the fecundity of the Carnegie foundations, 
and it shows the returns which can be had from large 
grants of money in the hands of a skilful director. As 
may be seen from the figures given, it has considerable 
resources at its disposal ($75,000). 

The Marine Biological Station of the Tortugas Islands 
is directed by Mr. A. G. Mayer. It is intended for the 
exploration of marine nature in the tropics, and for the 

neighborhood, and devoted to eugenics. He gathers in this institute the 
most varied statistics on heredity in man, secured chiefly from inquiries and 
tabulated on filing cards. The latter are then analyzed, taken apart in mul- 
tiple entries, classified, and put at the disposition of investigators. This 
institute {Eugenics Record Office), spends large sums annually (about $25,000), 
furnished by gifts, in particular by Mrs. E. H. Harriman. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 187 

study of the biology of the coral reefs. It is well- 
equipped, and supplied with a good fishing fleet. Un- 
fortunately it is rather difficult of access, and physical 
life there is rather hard. I believe I understood that 
after the war it would perhaps be moved to one of the 
greater Antilles. A large number of interesting mem- 
oirs have already come from it, due to biologists who 
have come there to work, and relative either to the 
fauna of the Tortugas, or to that of the Bahamas, or 
to that of distant regions, like Torres Strait, to which an 
expedition had been organized in 1913 by Mr. G. Mayer. 

The Department of Southern Hemisphere Astrometry, 
under the direction of Professor L. Boss, has for its 
object the exact determination of the stars of the 
southern sky, and to this end an observatory was estab- 
lished in 1909, on the eastern plateau of the Andes, at 
San Luis, in the Argentine Republic. 

The Solar Observatory on Mt. Wilson, situated at an 
altitude of four thousand feet, on the mountains which 
dominate the beautiful city of Pasadena, in southern 
California, is directed by Mr. G. E. Hale, to whom we 
owe researches of the highest interest on the solar 
spots, and the part which magnetic phenomena play in 
them. These researches have been carried out thanks 
to the magnificent instruments with which the observa- 
tory has been equipped, and which were in large part 
planned by Mr. Hale himself, and thanks to the addi- 
tion of a physical laboratory to the observatory proper. 
Like the Geophysical Laboratory, the Mt. Wilson Ob- 
servatory is today an establishment possessing technical 
resources unique in the world, and also, as has been 
seen, having at its disposal enormous subsidies ($254,000 
in 1913). 



188 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

The Nutrition Laboratory was erected in 1907-08, 
at Boston, in the immediate neighborhood of the Har- 
vard Medical School, which furnishes it heat, cold, 
compressed air, motive power, electricity, etc. It is 
directed by Mr. F. G. Benedict. The laboratory is in- 
tended for the continuation of researches which this 
scientist had begun with Atwater, and which have 
brought one of the most important contributions to the 
study of animal energetics, that is, the chemical and 
calorific exchanges of the organism, or, as it is also called, 
metabolism. Nutrition leads to problems of this order. 
Whether it is a question of muscular work, respiration, 
etc., one is finally led to measures of energy; measures 
of heat thrown off, with the aid of calorimeters; meas- 
ures of energy furnished by the knowledge of food con- 
sumed, work done, etc. 

The field of studies includes not only normal nutri- 
tion, but its pathological alterations, in states like 
diabetes, and naturally all the experimental modifica- 
tions which can be imagined. The great importance of 
this laboratory is then evident, to which thirteen 
scientific collaborators are regularly attached, and 
which has at its disposal, henceforth, a magnificent 
outfit of calorimeters, various thermometric appara- 
tus, and apparatus for chemical analysis, rooms ar- 
ranged for the study of metabolism, especially on man, 
or on certain animals. The possibilities of utilization 
of this laboratory, for pure science or social applica- 
tions, are so to speak unlimited, since they cover the 
whole field of the physiology of nutrition. Besides its 
regular staff, it welcomes foreign scientists. As has 
been seen, its endowment is large ($48,000 in 1913). 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 189 

The Department of Terrestrial Magnetism has for a 
director Mr. L. A. Bauer, aided by fifteen scientific 
collaborators. Mr. Bauer was formerly director of the 
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (see below). 
The department has studied terrestrial magnetism 
especially in the oceanic regions. For this purpose, in 
1908-09, a ship was built, entirely free from magnetism 
of its own, and permitting measurements of high pre- 
cision — the Carnegie, 150 feet long, 568 tons, a sailing 
vessel with auxiliary engine. This ship has already made 
long cruises in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, 
and besides, has carried out numerous researches on land, 
in regions still unexplored from this point of view. 

Outside of these scientific establishments properly 
so-called, the Carnegie institution has two other de- 
partments, one of economic and sociological studies, 
directed by Mr. H. W. Farnam, and devoted to the 
diverse questions of political economy of the United 
States (population and immigration, agriculture, for- 
ests, mines, manufactures, transportation, domestic and 
foreign commerce, banks, labor, industrial organiza- 
tion, social legislation, etc.); the other. Historical 
Studies, busies itself especially with facilitating, directly 
or by the publication of documents, researches on the 
history of America. 

Besides these special departments, founded wholly 
new, and entirely sustained by it, the Carnegie In- 
stitution distributes important grants to a certain 
number of scientists working in university laboratories. 
It has thus made it possible to conduct many important 
researches. It will be sufiicient to mention here those 
of Professor Richards of Harvard on the atomic weights. 



190 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

of Mr. H. Jones and his students at Johns Hopkins on 
solutions, of Mr. W. E. Castle of Harvard on Mendelian 
heredity, etc. The total of the sums devoted to these 
grants, in 1913, was $200,000. 

The Carnegie Institution, then at the end of fifteen 
years of existence, has already effected a number of 
important researches, in extremely diverse sciences, and 
it has succeeded in obtaining a satisfactory return, 
which depends above all on the skilful choice of men. 
It will be noted that it has been able to build afresh, 
with all the technical resources desirable, new labora- 
tories for the study of new questions. That is a great 
advantage over the methods to which we are generally 
reduced in Europe, and which consist in using old in- 
stitutions for new needs. The equipment, and the staff 
no less, cannot be sufficiently modernized for them. 
However, certain persons regret that it has bent its 
endeavors especially to the foundation of permanent 
establishments, whose budget is very heavy, instead 
of remaining entirely faithful to the original idea, 
which was to discover men, and give them, for the time 
being, the broadest facilities. 

It represents actually one of the vastest and most 
fecund organizations of research. Its annual budget is 
a little more than $1,000,000. 

2. Rockefeller Institute for Medical 
Research, of New York 

Like Mr. Andrew Carnegie, a son of his works, Mr. 
J. D. Rockefeller, like him, devoted a considerable part 
of his large fortune to educational works or scientific 
studies. He is the principal founder of the University 
of Chicago, which has received $25,000,000 from him. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 191 

His name is found among the big donors to the principal 
universities; thus he contributed to the building of the 
Harvard Medical School. 

One of his principal foundations is the Institute of 
experimental medicine which bears his name, at New 
York. One can say that its plan is modeled after that 
of our Pasteur Institute. It is a collection of research 
laboratories, centred about the experimental study of 
infectious diseases, and extending to all parts of Biology 
which can bring light to bear on them. 

The foundation was decided on in 1901. Two hundred 
thousand dollars were devoted to preliminary studies on 
similar establishments in Europe; studies which were 
made by Mr. S. Flexner, now director of the Institute. 

The plans were approved in 1904, and the Institute 
dedicated in 1906. It originally consisted of one build- 
ing. It has already been expanded by the addition of a 
hospital, and of a second group of laboratories, whose 
construction was finished in 1916. It covers a rather 
large area, on the banks of the East River, around which 
large open spaces are laid out in all directions. The 
actual endowment (capital) of the Institute is about 
$12,500,000, representing an income of about $600,000.i 

The Institute includes a number of distinct labora- 
tories or departments; pathology, bacteriology, phys- 
iological and pathological chemistry, physiology and 
comparative zoology, pharmacology, experimental ther- 
apeutics. The staff includes several men of great ability, 
and numerous works of considerable importance have 

^ The French newspapers announced, in the last days of May, 1917, that 
Mr. Rockefeller was making a very large donation for the reconstitution of 
the regions devastated by the war, and that at the same time he was adding 
$25,000,000 to the endowment of the Rockefeller Institute of New York. 



192 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

already come from the laboratories. It will suffice to 
recall the researches of Mr. Flexner and his students 
on cerebrospinal meningitis and its serotherapy, and on 
infantile paralysis; Mr. A. Carrel's work on the surgery 
of blood vessels, and the culture of tissues; that of the 
physiologist, J. Loeb, on experimental parthenogenesis, 
and many problems of general physiology. 

The Rockefeller Institute has as an annex, a little 
laboratory for Mr. J. Loeb at Wood's Hole, Mass., ad- 
jacent to that which was considered above, and especi- 
ally, a large laboratory for animal pathology, which 
was in construction at Princeton, N. J., in 1916, and 
whose director will be Mr. Theobald Smith, former 
Harvard professor and well-known for his discoveries 
on Texas fever, etc. 

The Rockefeller Institute is self-governing. The 
scientists w^ho compose it share, at least largely, in its 
direction. 

A certain number of similar foundations should be 
mentioned with the Rockefeller Institute, in particular 
the Chicago Memorial Institute for Infectious Dis- 
eases, founded in 1902 and endowed with $2,000,000, 
the George Crocker Foundation for the study of Cancer, 
endowed with $1,500,000, the Tuberculosis Institute, 
founded at Philadelphia in 1903, and others. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS AND IN 

PARTICULAR THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF 

NATURAL HISTORY OF NEW YORK 

THE great museums form another group devoted to 
research proper, whose modern equipment, en- 
dowment in money and in men, make them especially 
interesting for the European to study. One finds in 
them the boldness and breadth of conception, and 
the rapidity of execution, which are characteristic of 
American enterprises. Also and above all, one finds in 
them the enthusiasm which the public and especially 
the wealthy class puts into the development of these es- 
tablishments. They are successfully adapted to their 
double role, the education of the great public, and 
scientific progress. 

The majority are of relatively recent creation, and 
their development has been much accelerated of late 
years, so that there is the following result: ^ 

Number of Museums Cost 

Founded of Buildings 

1840-49 1 $200,000 

1850-59 2 34,000 

1860-69 6 1,277,000 

1870-79 7 6,030,000 

1880-89 5 '560,000 

1890-99 20 9,866,000 

1900-09 21 14,224,000 

1 Science, July 26, 1912. 
193 



194 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

The geographical distribution of the museums in 
America seems interesting to summarize : 

Cost of Buildings 

New England States 19 $4,910,000 

Middle Atlantic States 16 17,478,000 

North Central States 16 8,466,000 

Washington, D. C 2 4,400,000 

Far West (Rocky Mountains and Pacific) 10 1,831,000 

Southern States 2 140,000 

The National Museum at Washington, maintained 
out of the federal ^ funds and quite recently reinstalled 
in a sumptuous edifice, must be placed in the front rank. 
This museum has been enriched with extreme rapidity. 
The last report of the Smithsonian Institution shows 
for 1914-15 the accession of more than 300,000 speci- 
mens, two-thirds of them for zoology and paleontology. 
It is evidently destined to become the richest on the 
continent. Among the other great museums,^ I shall 
mention the Carnegie Museum at Pittsburgh, which has 
a very important paleontological collection, the Museum 
of the state of New York, at Albany, also rich in this 
respect, the Field Museum at Chicago, and especially 
the American Museum of Natural History at New 
York. 

I will restrict myself here to speaking of the last- 
named, of which I saw more, and which, moreover is the 

1 1915 budget: $383,500; furniture, $25,000; heating and lighting, 
$46,000; collections, $300,000; books, $2000; postage, $500; care of build- 
ings, $10,000. 

2 The university museums should be added to this list: some are very 
large, like the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. Others, less 
extensive, are nevertheless very rich, for certain divisions. Such is that of 
Princeton University, which has magnificent wealth for the fossil Mammals, 
thanks to the activity of Professor W, B. Scott. Such is also that of Yale, 
which includes Marsh's rich and famous collections, and others. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 195 

most accessible to foreigners. It is interesting for its 
size, its plan, and its working. It is one of the finest 
institutions of New York. 

It is situated quite near Central Park, and its foun- 
dation goes back to 1869. Happily, it was conceived on 
a very large scale: only three-fifths of the plan are 
actually realized. Its financial working has been based 
on the collaboration of the municipality and the public. 
In fact the city has given the land and building, and 
assured the expenses of the physical upkeep, but it is 
for private initiative to provide the increase of the col- 
lections. It is managed by a board of trustees and its 
present president is Mr. H. F. Osborn, the well-known 
paleontologist. As the prosperity of the museum de- 
pends in part on the public, its management does 
everything possible to win its favor. As is logical, the 
museum is double; there is the museum for popular 
education, and the scientific museum proper. The first 
has been planned in the same fashion as the entrance 
hall of the British Museum of Natural History at Lon- 
don. It does not seek to pile up before the eyes of the 
overwhelmed and bewildered public, collections of in- 
numerable objects without meaning for it, but to 
present significant examples in as self-explanatory a 
form as possible. Whence, for example, the system of 
groups for the animals, in which they are replaced in 
their biological environment. They are presented in 
the setting in which they live in nature. The series of 
the groups of birds is particularly fine and varied. The 
flamingoes and their nest-making, leave an indellible 
impression with whoever has seen them. Another 
group represents a pool in the New England woods in 
spring, with the commonest animals which dwell there. 



196 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

Still another is a vertical section of the beach sand, in 
which the worms and other types are in place, as one 
can find them at Wood's Hole. This system is applied 
to everything. The natural specimens are replaced, 
when necessary, by glass models, executed with great 
perfection. Thus the visitor has before his eyes what 
the naturalist sees in a coral reef, or in any given bio- 
logical association. If it is a question of giving him an 
idea of microscopic animals — Protozoa such as the 
Radiolaria — they still have recourse to drawn glass 
models, very skilfully executed. It goes without saying 
that when the specimens lend themselves to exposition 
and comprehension, models are not substituted for 
them. 

One of the finest and best presented collections is 
that of the trees of the United States. America far sur- 
passes Europe in the beauty and variety of its forest 
flora. Europe has only about fifty indigenous kinds of 
trees. North America has ^ve hundred of them, a cer- 
tain number of which are giants like the Sequoias and 
the great Pines {Pinus lamhertiana, etc.) of the Sierra 
Nevada forests. A series of specimens marvelously 
chosen from these kinds, and admirably presented, oc- 
cupies a large room. It is due to the munificence of Mr. 
M. K. Jesup. Explanatory documents, tags, photo- 
graphs, comment on all the specimens in the most edu- 
cative manner, from the species of the California forests 
to the Florida mangrove, whose germination one can 
follow. 

Vertebrate paleontology is represented in this museum 
by admirable material, results of the great explorations 
of Cope, Osborn and other American paleontologists. 
The visitor marvels at the admirably restored skeletons 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 197 

of the great secondary reptiles; he reads there without 
difficulty the evolution of the Equides — from the 
Eohippus to the horse; of the Titanothera and of 
many families of Mammals, which is clearly explained 
to him, always without overloading with specimens 
among which he would get lost. They show him only 
just what is necessary in order to understand. The mu- 
seum of researches and documents, which interests in- 
vestigators only, consists of stacks and laboratories which 
occupy the upper stories, where only experts penetrate. 
Perhaps its area is too limited in relation to the whole. 
The procedure adopted for exposition, so advantageous 
from the educational point of view, requires an enormous 
space. 

American mineralogy and ethnography are also 
magnificently represented. 

The action of the museum on the public is not limited 
to the exposition of specimens and groups. It is com- 
plemented by a very methodical organization of lec- 
tures, and by the gathering of an enormous collection 
of projection slides. Rooms and series of slides are put 
at the disposition of school teachers, who can come to 
the museum to give series of lectures to their pupils; or 
of qualified persons for public lectures on various scien- 
tific subjects. Circulating collections are lent to the 
primary schools, in order to show the children significant 
biological facts. The museum is thus very popular. It 
receives an enormous number of visitors (1,043,582 in 
1909), whom it interests and really instructs. It is 
open not only during the day, but about one hundred 
and eighty evenings in a year, for lectures. In 1909 
the popular lectures had 82,178 auditors, and the 
lectures on tuberculosis 42,627. In July, 1916, at the 



198 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

time of my last stay in New York, a congress of museum 
directors was held at the Museum, under the presidency 
of Mr. Osborn. 

The American Museum is, then, an extremely effica- 
cious instrument of popular education, and it finds, in 
return, an effective audience among the people. It 
enrolls as members, by diverse titles, annual members, 
sustaining members, life members, fellows, patrons, 
associate benefactors or benefactors, whoever gives 
from $10 to $50,000 a year. It has, especially, very 
numerous annual members, to whom it distributes a 
publication (American Museum Journal), which in- 
forms them of all the novelties on exhibition. Besides, 
to measure the aid which individuals bring to it, noth- 
ing is clearer than figures. In 1909, of a total expense 
of $275,419, $160,000 was furnished by the city, and 
$115,000 by gifts. From 1901 to 1906, $932,000 was 
spent in explorations and increases of the collections, 
which came entirely from individual gifts. 

The consolidated endowment of the museum has re- 
mained relatively small till now. In 1909 it was only a 
little more than $2,000,000. But it has recently re- 
ceived, through the will of one of its former presidents, 
Mr. M. K. Jessup, $6,000,000, the income of which is 
to be used for explorations, scientific researches, and 
publications. 

I have emphasized the popular character. But its 
true end is the progress of our scientific knowledge, 
and through its publications and its expeditions of 
every kind, it has effectively contributed to it. It is 
above all an institution of research which fully realizes 
its triple motto: "For the people, for education, for 
science." In accord with the constitution of the mu- 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 199 

seum, the participation of the pubhe wholly assures 
its niore strictly scientific work. There is no closer com- 
bination between a work of public education and of 
science. In 1910, at a service commemorative of Mr. 
M. K. Jessup, former president of the museum, and 
benefactor, Mr. Choate said: "This union of public 
and private responsibility and generosity which has 
been the model on which the other similar institutions 
of the city are founded, has procured for New York 
something very superior both to the entirely public 
institutions of foreign cities, and to institutions entirely 
private in their foundation and management which the 
other large cities of America possess." 

I must add that this museum, with the other great 
American museums, represents today, in the natural 
sciences, a very important scientific movement; the 
publications, bulletins and memoirs, which come from 
them, and which cannot be enumerated here, fully 
attest it. For that, they have the indispensable ele- 
ments at their disposal; first, a large income, permit- 
ting them to make purchases of collections on occasion, 
and especially, to organize excavations, dredging, or 
expeditions on land, at various points. American activ- 
ity is very great in this regard, and almost always finds 
the necessary resources easily. The collections gath- 
ered are brought in to enrich the great museums, and 
to furnish interesting subjects for studies. 

A second element, no less indispensable, is an ap- 
propriate staff. It must be numerous, for researches of 
this kind entail extreme specialization, and consequently 
require numerous curators. In order to have men of 
ability, they must, on the other hand, be paid suitably. 
That also leads to a financial question. Nevertheless 



200 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

it is not the only one in question. It is chiefly important 
for a museum to devote itself first of all to its proper 
mission, which is, to gather collections, to make them 
worth while, and to assure their preservation; and not 
to give courses and lectures. The staff should be selected 
for their aptitude and taste for doing this kind of re- 
search, and not for the qualities which make the pro- 
fessor. Finally, for the presentation of the collections, 
a museum must have numerous technicians, and real 
artists, when it is a question of reconstituting fossil 
skeletons, of presenting living mammals, of making 
models of microscopic animals, of painting even the 
reconstitution of extinct animals. That is what the 
American Museum, among others, possesses at present. 
The scientific personnel of the American museums 
forms a very large body, of unquestionable competency. 
They meet every year in a special congress, which 
studies all scientific or professional questions, relative 
to the organization of museums. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE FEDERAL INSTITUTIONS 
Scientific Research at Washington 

The Smithsonian Institution. The Federal Scientific Establishments: The 
scientific bureaus of the various ministries (agriculture, commerce, interior) . 
The Geological Survey. Plans for the establishment of a national university 
at Washington. 

The Smithsonian Institution 

rpniS institution,! established in Washington, is the 
-^ oldest of the great foundations of research in the 
United States. James Smithson, an Englishman, a 
member of the Royal Society of London, a friend of 
Cavendish and Arago died at Genoa in 1829, bequeath- 
ing his fortune, in the absence of descendants of certain 
relatives, to the government of the United States and 
charging it with the organization of an institution bear- 
ing the name of Smithson, "for the increase and diffu- 
sion of Knowledge among men." It seems that he got 
the plan from a phrase in the political testament of 
Washington, where the great man urges upon his fellow- 
countrymen the same plan in the same terms. It ap- 
pears also that he desired to perpetuate his name, in 
compensation for the disappointments he had under- 
gone because of the irregularity of his birth.^ 

^ For its history, see The Smithsonian Institution — The History of its 
first half-century, ed. by G. B. Goode, Washington, 1897, 4°, 856 pp. 

2 "The best English blood flows in my veins" he writes; "through my 
father, I am a Northumberland; and I have royal blood from my mother. 
But this is of no account to me. My name will live in the memory of men 
when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys will have been ex- 
tinguished and forgotten." Quoted from The Smithsonian Institution, p. 2. 

201 



202 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

It cannot be denied that the terms of the donation 
lack precision, and as a consequence, the orientation of 
the Institute has been and still is somewhat uncertain. 
Henry, who was its first secretary, had considered giv- 
ing it the form of a Museum, but believed that this 
would not correspond with Smithson's intention; never- 
theless, under his successors, it is in this direction that 
it has tended, forming as it did very intimate relations 
with the National Museum which for a long while was 
lodged in the buildings of the Institute. Even recently ^ 
its function has been made the object of discussions. 
Some would like it to be an institute of research; others 
reply that a Museum would fulfill such a function. It 
has been correctly remarked that the absence of pre- 
cision in the terms used by Smithson allowed great 
freedom in the administration of the institution and its 
adaptation to conditions impossible to foresee in the 
middle of the last century. 

Smithson's bequest amounted to five hundred and 
forty thousand dollars and by means of other donations 
the capital of the Institute has been increased to a mil- 
lion dollars, almost all of which is deposited at the 
United States Treasury at an interest of six per cent. 
In 1915 the Institute spent a hundred thousand dollars 
in all for its own services (such as $13,569 on publica- 
tions and $9,021 on special subventions for research 
work); but it directs on behalf of the government a 
number of scientific establishments involving a budget 
of six hundred thousand dollars. 

It publishes original memoirs (Contributions to 
Knowledge and Miscellaneous Collections) and Annual 
Reports in which it reprints works which it considers 

1 Science, first and second half-year, 1906. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 203 

worth circulating. All this meets the requirements of 
the two objects of the Smithson donation : the progress 
and diffusion of Science. In 1915 the total of its pub- 
lications made up 6,753 pages with Q55 plates, and more 
than 132,000 copies had been distributed. Moreover, 
it subsidizes original research and scientific explorations. 

The Smithsonian Institute has been the cradle of 
several federal scientific services which we shall study 
later, and it is still intimately connected with the Na- 
tional Museum, the Bureau of American Ethnology and 
the Observatory of Physical Astronomy. To it is en- 
trusted the service of International Exchanges and of 
American participation in international scientific work 
such as the International Catalogue of Scientific Litera- 
ture. Its library has been merged with the Congres- 
sional Library, of which latter it forms one of the 
principal parts and represents today more than half a 
million volumes. 

Accordingly the Smithsonian Institute has a rather 
slender capital in comparison with that of certain of the 
establishments described above and it disposes of very 
limited means for the organization of research. 

The Federal Scientific Services 

The Federal Government, which controls but a small 
part of the public life of the United States because of the 
considerable sovereignty of each individual state, has 
nevertheless been able to develop certain institutions 
out of all proportion with those of other countries, this 
being particularly true of the scientific services attached 
to the various branches of its administration. During 
the last half-century, it has perceived to an admirable 
degree the practical value of science and has provided 



204 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

the latter to an increasing extent every year with ma- 
terial means of rendering it useful to the country. It is 
a question not of science for the sake of science without 
reference to application, but of the scientific investiga- 
tion of practical questions.^ 

Washington, the seat of all federal institutions has 
become through the development of the governmental 
establishments in question, a considerable scientific 
centre. There is a Washington science, sometimes con- 
trasted with College science, the science of the universi- 
ties, not without a slight flavor of disdain. In reality, 
both of them reflect, as is natural, professional peculiari- 
ties. Their points of view are different. On the one 
hand, the administrative and on the other the peda- 
gogical atmosphere exert an influence over and mani- 
fest themselves among the mediocre element in each of 
the two systems. The universities are sometimes in- 
clined to multiply their doctors' theses beyond reason 
in order to demonstrate their vitality; the administra- 
tive bureaus on their side tend to seek justification in 
the eyes of the community for the credits allotted to 
them in thick reports. But we must not judge them 
from their defects; the important point is that the 
faith of the federal government in the practical value of 
Science and the application of the latter in the govern- 
mental services have without doubt helped to increase 
in a large measure the productivity of the country and 
to combat the spirit of routine. 

1 It is very significant that all the scientific services have taken rise in 
the variolis departments, that there is no department of public instruction 
in existence. The federal services concerned with instruction of whatever 
grade constitute a simple Bureau {Bureau of Education) under a Commis- 
sioner and not a Secretary of State. Every state has its own secretary of 
public instruction or someone equivalent. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 205 

The Scientific Bureaus of the Department 
OF Agriculture 

This fact is most obvious in the department of Agri- 
culture. Despite the great industrial development of 
the United States, agriculture has so far been the great 
source of wealth in the country, and in no country has 
it made a call upon scientific cooperation to the same 
degree. The farmers resemble the French peasants very 
little; especially today the majority of them have re- 
ceived education in colleges of agriculture, even in uni- 
versities where as we have seen the teaching of the 
sciences applied to agriculture is given great promi- 
nence. Thus they are apt to welcome any information of 
a scientific nature that may be offered to them. 

Now, the Department of Agriculture embraces 
Bureaus corresponding to the various aspects of agri- 
cultural labor; these are veritable administrative estab- 
lishments of which the total comprises actually more 
than thirteen thousand government employees and a 
budget of twenty million dollars. In these bureaus, 
the scientific services play a very considerable part. 

They are as follows, along with their financial pro- 
vision for 1913-1914: 

Weather Bureau $1,707,610 

Bureau of Animal Husbandry 2,031,196 

Plant Industry 2,667,995 

" Chemistry 1,058,140 

Soils 334,020 

" Entomology 742,210 

" Biological Survey 170,990 

Forest Service 5,399,670 

These figures have nothing stereotyped about them; 
they go on increasing almost regularly with every 



206 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

budget. The endowment of the department of agricul- 
ture has passed through the following stages: 

Year 1870 ,. $156,440 

« 1880 201,000 

« 1890 1,669,770 

" 1900 3,726,022 

" 1910 12,995,274 

« 1913 22,894,590 

If we consider the Bureau of Entomology by itself, 
the figures of recent years are not less significant. In 
1915-16, when I passed through Washington, the num- 
bers had already risen from $742,000 in 1913-14 to 
$840,000 and the figure announced for the year 1916- 
17 is $868,880. Thus, the development of the scientific 
services continues at a rapid pace. From among all 
these considerable sums, I invite the reader's attention 
to the endowment of entomology only as applied in 
agriculture: $860,000, that is to say about 4,500,000 
francs! And yet this figure does not comprise whatever 
the individual states are spending or the sums spent in 
the universities and the agricultural colleges. 

We cannot enter into even a summary examination of 
the work of scientific research of these bureaus. Their 
program of work, published each year {Programme of 
Work of the U. S. Department of Agriculture) constitutes 
in 1917 a thick volume of five hundred pages; it enum- 
erates, article by article, all the cases of research pro- 
jected, their object and plan, the laboratories or executive 
organisms, the names of the responsible persons, the 
credit assigned, etc. 

I will first give certain very brief details on the Bureau 
of Entomology, whose director, Mr. L. O. Howard, very 
courteously took me round, and I urge the reader to 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 207 

study the institution in greater detail in the well-in- 
formed book which Mr. P. Marchal has written about it.^ 

Mr. L. O. Howard has two hundred and five scientific 
assistants and more than four hundred administrative 
clerks under his orders. The central bureau at Wash- 
ington is subdivided into eight sections, each one with 
its own head, and specializing in the study of insects in- 
jurious to a specific class of growths: insects injurious, 
1st, to cereals and to fodder farming; 2d, to market 
farming and to stocks in store; 3d, to fruit trees with 
caduceus leaves; 4th, to tropical or subtropical farm- 
ing; 5th, to southern farming; 6th, to forests; 7th, the 
fight against the Gypsy Moth and the Brown-Tail Moth; 
8th, section of apiculture. To each of these sections 
there correspond a certain number of special labora- 
tories, some quite temporary, others more permanent, 
ninety- two in all in 1916. 

These few facts bring out the importance of this or- 
ganization. It is conducted with the constant view of 
rendering really practical service to agriculture. Sci- 
ence comes in chiefly as a factor of economic power; 
nevertheless, the progress of science as such is thereby 
greatly furthered, were it only by the amplitude of the 
information collected and the experiments made in the 
laboratories. Riley, one of the predecessors of Mr. 
Howard, succeeded in 1886 in checking the disastrous 
propagation of cochineal — Icerya purchasi — which 
destroyed the orange trees of California, by introducing 
an Australian coccinelid — Novius cardinalis — which 
exterminates the cochineal; this method has now be- 
come adopted everywhere, and had been applied with 
success in the region of Nice just before the war. Simi- 

1 Marchal, p. xii, ajp. cit. 



208 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

larly, Mr. Howard has undertaken with success the 
really gigantic experiment of acclimatizing, in America, 
the European parasites of the Gypsy Moth {Liparis 
dispar) and of the Brown-Tail Moth (Liparis chry- 
sorrhea) in order to check the multiplication of those 
butterflies which ravaged the trees of New England. 
This particular form of warfare occupies an entire sec- 
tion of the Bureau of Entomology with a numerous per- 
sonnel in special experimental stations, and consumes 
annually more than a hundred thousand dollars. 

The need of providing this important institution with 
an appropriate scientific personnel has created in the 
United States a considerable school of biological ento- 
mology, which has reacted on the universities indirectly 
and has for example contributed powerfully to the 
development of biological instruction in Cornell and in 
the universities of Illinois, California, Nevada, etc. 

Let us now consider briefly the Bureau of Plant In- 
dustry, taking up its budget thus indicating its princi- 
pal sections; the corresponding credits give an idea of 
the material importance of the research undertaken by 
them. 

Number of 
Scientific Personnel Budget 

1. Central Administration 2 $103,880 

2. Laboratory of Vegetable Pathology 10 35,730 

3. Collection of Vegetable Pathology 4 12,010 

4. Research on the diseases of fi-uits 19 69,395 

5. Destruction of citrus-canker 335,715 

6. Research on forest-pathology 17 92,421 

7. Research on the maladies of cotton, tubercles and 

fodder plants 14 68,920 

8. Research on the physiology and culture of culti- 

vated plantp 8 58,840 

9. Research on the nutrition of plants 10,950 

10. Research on the fertility of soils 20 36,600 

1 1 . Research on the acclimation of plants of culture ... 13 47,020 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 209 

Number of 
Scientific Personnel Budget 

12. Research on medicinal and poisonoHis plants and 

on the fermentation of plants 

13. Research on agricultural technology 

14. Research on plants with textile fibres 

15. Research on grains (sampling, manipulation, 

transport, etc.) 

16. Research on cereals and their maladies 

17. Research on maize 

18. Research on tobacco 

19. Research on the plants which yield paper 

20. Research on the resistance of plants to alkalis and 

drought 

21. Research on beet sugar 

22. Research on economic and systematic botany. . . . 

23. Research on dry-land agriculture 

24. Research on irrigation in the West 

25. Research on pomology 

26. Research on horticulture and market-gardening. . 

27. Experimental fkrm of Arlington 

28. Experimental garden and hot-house, Washington, 

D. C 

29. Research on the introduction of grains and foreign 

plants 

30. Research on fodder 

31. Distribution of seed for experimental purposes. . . . 

32. Practical lectures 



Each of these thirty-one subdivisions is directed by a 
qualified scientist, among whom we may mention 
Messrs. W. T. Swingle, W. A. Orton, D. Fairchild, and 
the total represents, as is obvious, about four hundred 
scientific workers J 

All these items of expense concern research as carried 
out for the most part in special laboratories or in labora- 
tories of agricultural colleges or in experimental stations. 
Almost all the experiments are continued for a series 

^ The personnel includes numerous women. 



19 


$65,180 


4 


25,220 


2 


9,830 


42 


79,000 


40 


140,585 


12 


42,380 


15 


31,400 


3 


13,960 


5 


24,580 


10 


42,395 


7 


34,560 


30 


167,120 


12 


88,980 




128,147 


39 


80,333 




29,880 


3 


54,590 


17 


107,080 


21 


92,980 




338,780 


10 


40,000 


J98 


$2,488,461 



210 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

of years. To take an example, since 1904 the bureau 
has been carrying out methodical experiments in vari- 
ous parts of California on caprification with a view to 
introducing the cultivation of Smyrna figs. Last year, 
the results were no less than a production of 6400 tons. 
To the sole study of the bacteroids of leguminous plants 
$13,120 were allotted in 1916-17. The investigations 
upon fruits, upon the acclimatization and the introduc- 
tion of varieties and new species are of particular 
interest. But it is impossible to enter into details 
here. 

The Bureau of Animal Husbandry does a similar work 
of research on domestic animals, their products, their 
maladies, and especially on all that is related to their 
economic value. The investigations with respect to the 
milk industry only entailed, in 1916-17, a credit of 
$303,270. As an illustration, I may mention such sub- 
jects as the study of metabolism in milch-cows, carried 
out in cooperation with the Pennsylvania State College 
of Agriculture by Mr. H. P. Armsby, to whom a sum of 
$3500 had been assigned for that purpose. There is a 
credit of $452,880 for the fight against the diseases of 
animals; in 1916-17, a sum of $593,160 was spent for 
the destruction of the ticks that live on the Bovidae. 
Scientific researches on the various diseases of cattle 
are endowed with a sum of $177,160. 

The Bureau of Chemistry and the Bureau of Soils are 
purely scientific bureaus. Of great interest is the Bureau 
of Biological Survey which studies all the problems con- 
cerning the Mammals and wild birds, is occupied with 
the protection of game and with the care of the terri- 
torial reservations for the big animals such as the bison, 
and studies the behaviour of animals whether indige- 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 211 

nous or immigrant, the distribution of the various 
species, and the migrations of birds ($3,750). Its en- 
dowment was $614,530 for 1916-17. 

Bureaus Attached to the Department of 
Commerce 

Three great scientific agencies are attached to this 
department: the Bureau of Fisheries, the Bureau of 
Standards and the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. 

1. Bureau of Fisheries. — Among the functions of the 
Bureau of Fisheries is the economic study of both sea 
and fresh water throughout the United States and 
Alaska; and one of its principal aims is to increase their 
yield by the application of scientific methods to all the 
biological questions concerning aquatic animals useful 
to man. Its program is therefore very varied: sea- 
fishery; study of the development and habits of sea 
fish; the breeding of fish in the sea or in fresh waters; 
the study under the same conditions of the edible mol- 
luscs and crustaceans; the stocking of fresh water; not 
to mention special questions such as all that concerns 
the fur seals of the Pribiloff Isles in Behring's Sea. 

The budget of this bureau was $1,132,390 in 1912; 
$944,790 in 1913; $1,047,180 in 1914. These sums in- 
clude about $400,000 for salaries and wages, $335,000 
for the propagation of edible fish, and $60,000 for the 
maintenance of the fishing boats. 

As was mentioned above, the Bureau is provided with 
two maritime stations for scientific studies, one at 
Wood's Hole, Mass., and the other at Beaufort, S. C; 
it is now installing a third to the south of Florida, at 
Key West, and is planning another for the Pacific. It 
also has another large station for the biological study 



/ 



212 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

of fresh water, on the Mississippi, at Fairport, Iowa. 
Moreover, there are several stations for fish breeding 
of a practical nature, and similar operations. For all 
work at sea, there is a large steamboat, the Albatross, 
built for distant and prolonged voyages and capable of 
undertaking the deepest kind of dredging operations; 
a motorboat, the Fish Hawk, and other less consider- 
able boats. 

The Bureau of Fisheries has frequently organized 
oceanographical expeditions on a great scale on the 
Albatross and it has been led to a profound study of 
various biological questions. Thus it was that recently 
a mission organized under its auspices and consisting 
of Messrs. G. H. Parker, W. H. Osgood, and E. A. 
p0eble visited the Pribiloff Islands in the summer of 
1914 in order to study biological problems on the spot 
and collect statistics on the herds of fur seals {Callor- 
hinus alascanus). The story of this expedition is most 
interesting and was published in the Bulletin of the 
Bureau which forms every year a volume of different 
biological monographs. 

2. The National Bureau of Standards. — This Bureau, 
established in 1901 and directed by Mr. S. W. Stratton, 
has a role analogous to that of the National Physical 
Laboratory in England, to the Technische and Physika- 
lische Reichsanstalt of Berlin and to what ought to be 
the Experimental Laboratory of the Conservatory of Arts 
and Crafts in Paris. It keeps the standard measures, 
and makes all the measurements and tests of instru- 
ments. It controls the fundamental measures of length, 
time, and mass, and the electric measures. It also under- 
takes on behalf of the government measurements of 
quality, to this end incessantly perfecting the methods of 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 213 

measurement and weighing or inventing new ones. It 
would be impossible to give appropriate examples with- 
out entering into long technical details. 

This last category of measurements is undertaken 
only for the government. In order to avoid putting 
obstacles in the way of private initiative, non-official 
experimental laboratories have been left entirely free. 

The Bureau of Standards aims further to determine 
the value of physical constants that are needed in 
industry. 

Its personnel is distributed according to the nature 
of the scientific work (general measurement, electricity, 
heat and thermometry, optics, chemistry, metallurgy) 
and in 1915 consisted of two hundred thirty-three mem- 
bers of whom a hundred and forty-five were scientific 
workers. 

The building in which it is housed cost one million 
dollars in construction expenses and haK a million for 
the furnishing. The total budget amounted to $543,645 
in 1913, to $637,015 in 1914, and to $695,811 in 1915.^ 

In 1915 the Bureau had carried out 116,204 tests and 
printed one hundred and thirty-seven publications of 
which forty-six were new, comprising twenty-six sci- 
entific and technical memoirs. By the very nature of 
the practical services which it is destined to render, 
this bureau is led to carry on important scientific en- 
quiries in the different branches of Physics. 

3. The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, at- 
tached to the department of Commerce since 1903, 
dates from 1807. It is a great geodetic and hydro- 
graphic institution concerned principally with triangula- 
tion, astronomical measurement, the study of terrestrial 

^ Of these $293,500 for running expenses and salaries. 



214 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

magnetism, topography, the study of tides and tidal 
currents, the survey of the country, the study of gravity 
and geodesy in general. It is thus an agency contribut- 
ing to the progress of science. It used to be a branch of 
the Geological Survey but is now separated from it. 

Department of the Interior 

The United States Geological Survey 

The Geological Survey attached to the Department of 
the Interior is a scientific institution of considerable 
importance and in its actual form, unified as it is for 
the whole of the United States, it dates from 1879. 
Before this time, there existed analogous organizations 
limited to particular portions of American territory. 
These partial Surveys have accomplished a remarkable 
work in geology and geography. The exploration of the 
Grand Canyon of Colorado by Major Powell is a clas- 
sical example. The Coast and Geodetic Survey, of which 
mention was made above was only recently detached 
from the Survey in question. 

The function of the Geological Survey is to secure an 
inventory and a classification of the lands, waters, and 
various mineral products of the national soil. 

To give an idea of its recent development and present 
resources we will mention that in 1879 it was endowed 
with $106,000, in 1889 with $801,240, in 1903-04 with 
$1,377,820, and in 1914-15 with $1,620,520. During' 
the last year, its personnel consisted of nine hundred 
and nine workers. 

Its program, which is at once scientific and practical, 
may be discovered from its subdivisions : the survey of 
Alaska, mines and metallurgical resources, chemical 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 215 

and physical research, topography, geography, and 
forests, hydrography (study of rivers), hydrology (sub- 
terranean waters), utilization of surface waters (hydro- 
economics), publications. 

The publications of the Geological Survey are very 
great in number; already six hundred bulletins have 
appeared many of them with more than a hundred pages 
respectively, and also sixty large geological monographs, 
without counting the very numerous publications on 
surface waters. Finally, this Survey is entrusted with 
the execution of the general geological map of the United 
States, an enormous enterprise and still far from accom- 
plishment. During a single year, in 1914-15, the Sur- 
vey edited sixty-six publications, with 21,407 pages and 
191 maps. 

The Geological Survey, through its explorations and 
publications may be said to have become an important 
instrument in the study of pure geology. And the facts 
which it has been able to collect have been a factor of 
prime importance in the economic development of the 
United States. 

However specialized its field, it nevertheless con- 
tributes to the general education of the public. To give 
an idea of the dissemination of scientific knowledge ef- 
fected by these great organizations, I will cite a case 
from my personal experience. While traveling from 
Chicago to San Diego on the Santa Fe Railway, on a 
visit to the Grand Canyon of Arizona, then going back 
from San Diego to San Francisco by the coast line, and 
finally returning from San Francisco toward New York 
by Ogden, the Great Salt Lake and Yellowstone Park, 
I was able to study and appreciate the scenery along all 
these lines, thanks to the recent publications of the 



216 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

Geological Survey,^ which inform the traveler, for every 
portion of the Hne, of everything that is worth seeing 
from the train, from the point of view of physical geog- 
raphy, geology, the natural resources of the country, 
and the recent history of its colonization. These pub- 
lications prove convincingly how science always tries 
to justify its usefulness by direct and tangible services 
rendered to all the members of the community. 

The preceding list of scientific governmental estab- 
lishments is not complete. One should add the National 
Museum, of which mention was made elsewhere, the 
Bureau of Mines, the PubHc Health Service, the Bureau 
of Education, the Naval Observatory, and finally the 
Library of Congress which is equivalent to our Na- 
tional Library. This library, equipped luxuriously and 
yet in very practical fashion, offers considerable re- 
sources for scientific work. In 1912 it possessed more 
than two million volumes, and had a budget of about 
$600,000 of which $100,000 were for purchases. 

Washington is unique among American cities, and 
something of a paradox to Americans, for it has neither 
commerce nor industry to justify its growth; it is simply 
a city of administration. Moreover, it is one of the most 
beautiful cities in the United States built on a very 
original plan, the work of a Frenchman, L'Enfant, a 
major of the engineers, who had come to America with 
Lafayette and Rochambeau. Nowadays, it has an in- 
creasing number of marble palaces and its monuments 
are rapidly multiplying. 

As we have just seen, Washington has also become a 

1 Bull. 612. — The Overland Route (244 pp.); 613. — The Santa FS Route 
(194 pp); 614. — The Shasta Route and Coast-line (142 pp); with maps — 
at a scale of 1/500,000 — of all the lines and many photographs, 1915. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 217 

considerable scientific centre in that its governmental 
institutions embrace scientific organizations. From 
among the thousand best men of science in the list pre- 
pared in 1906 by Mr. J. McK. Cattell, one hundred and 
nineteen resided in Washington. 

These considerations have given birth among many 
minds to the idea of establishing in Washington, rich 
as it is with so many resources, a great National Uni- 
versity. ^ The plans vary as to detail but are in general 
agreed on the point that such a university ought to be 
of a different type from those already in existence. It 
should altogether dispense with elementary education 
and devote itself uniquely to scientific research. In 
any case, instruction should be reduced to a minimum. 
It should likewise dispense with all awards of degrees 
and diplomas. Above all, it should constitute a better 
utilization of the immense scientific resources of the 
federal capital which at the present are being somewhat 
stifled by the too great administrative atmosphere of 
the place. The National University, says J. McK. Cat- 
tell, would be the best instrument for uniting the ideals 
of the democracy into a single body. 

This project was formulated chiefly by the presidents 
of the state universities, who see in it a natural ex- 
tension of the conception on which their own universi- 
ties are based. The federal government would thus be 
able to produce, in the way of a university, something 
beyond the forces both of the individual states, owing 
to its immense resources, and of the private universi- 
ties whatever their wealth and the devotion of their 
alumni, or whatever the resources of a Carnegie or a 

1 Cf. Science, August 16, 1912, November 29, 1912, January 17, 1913, 
February 15, 1914. 



218 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

Rockefeller. On the other hand, the private universi- 
ties have shown themselves quite hostile to the plan, 
seeing in it, with more or less clearness, a threat against 
themselves and in any case an aggravation of the com- 
petition against them by the State. Disregarding the 
egotistical element in this opposition, it would none 
the less remain true that a university too powerfully 
concentrated in Washington would have to balance its 
advantages against serious disadvantages. One of the 
favoring circumstances in the scientific evolution of 
the United States has been precisely the fact that intel- 
lectual activity has not been concentrated at a single 
point, nor in the hands of the State, and that powerful 
and completely autonomous organizations still seem 
capable of balancing one another. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

ACADEMIES AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES 

The American Philosophical Society. The American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences. The National Academy of Sciences: its r61e, composition, and 
mode of elections; reflections and comparisons. The American Association 
for the Advancement of Science. 

NOWADAYS the United States numbers many 
academies and scientific societies whose role hardly 
differs from that of the analogous organizations in 
Europe, except perhaps in that the immensity of the 
territory provides more of a raison d'etre for academies 
or local societies and endows the large national societies 
with greater importance as a means of coordinating 
scientific activity. 

Let us first consider the oldest of these. 

The dean of the large scientific societies of the United 
States, which even today is among those that have most 
prestige, is the American Philosophical Society estab- 
lished in Philadelphia. According to its seal, it was 
founded in 1727 and its complete title is The American 
Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia for promot- 
ing useful Knowledge. Benjamin Franklin was its 
founder and first secretary. The title which it adopted 
under his inspiration reflects the purpose of making 
science useful to man. The original program enumer- 
ated a long series of possible undertakings, including 
"all experiments of a philosophical character which 
might illuminate the nature of things, or tend to in- 
crease the power of man over matter, or multiply the 
goods and pleasures of life." The word "philosophy" 

319 



220 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

is here used in its classical English sense so as to mean 
the total of what we call science. 

The society was organized after the model of the 
London Royal Society. It has been publishing Trans- 
actions since 1799, and Proceedings since 1838. It has 
a national as well as a local character. The general 
meeting held annually at Easter in Philadelphia is 
attended by a large number of members from various 
parts of the United States. I was honored with an in- 
vitation in 1916. In accordance with American customs, 
besides communications presented by the members, 
the order of the day includes a question which a group 
of members have been requested to study in advance 
from particular points of view, giving to the meeting 
the character of what the Americans call a symposium. 
In 1916 the topic was the organization of peace. 

The session comes to an end with a very cordial 
banquet of which the menu was embroidered with a 
sprightly humor borrowed from the best authors. "I 
believe in banquets, they lubricate matters"; ran a 
quotation from Lord Stowell. Every course becomes 
an object of a more or less classical allusion and every 
toast is announced in similar fashion. The toast- 
master invoked with a verse from Troilus and Cressida 
the privilege of choosing his own subject. From among 
the other toasts and in accordance with tradition, the 
first concerned Benjamin Franklin whose memory is 
particularly vivid in the Eastern United States; in 
1916, Professor Trowbridge of Princeton, the orator of 
the day, evoked before his audience the life of the 
founder of the society and the decisive part which he 
had taken in the military organization of the American 
colonies in the eighteenth century — a procedure anal- 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 221 

ogous to that which was urged in 1916 by the partisans 
of preparedness. The other toasts concerned sister- 
scientific societies, universities, and the society itself. 
Last year, in the thoughts of almost all there was the 
thought of the European war and sympathy for the 
cause of France. 

The oldest of the American Academies after the 
Philosophical Society is the American Academy of 
Arts and Sciences, founded in Boston in 1780, on a 
model more similar to the Paris academies. It meets 
once a month, between October and May, in a very 
comfortable home which it owes to an important be- 
quest from Alexander Agassiz. 

This society has more of a local character than the 
other, although the rather numerous list of its members 
covers the various parts of the United States. The 
maximum number of its national members is six hun- 
dred, divided into three classes (mathematics and phys- 
ical sciences, natural sciences and physiology, moral and 
political sciences). 

The Connecticut Academy at New Haven, founded 
in connection with Yale dates from 1797. Its Transac- 
tions dating from 1866, contain the celebrated mem- 
oirs of J. Willard Gibbs. The Maryland Academy 
at Baltimore was founded in 1809, the New York 
Academy of Sciences in 1817, then designated as a 
lyceum. Nowadays all the large cities have their own 
more or less recent academies. The Washington Acad- 
emy of Sciences instituted in 1898, merits special men- 
tion because it forms a federation of sixteen specialized 
scientific societies estabhshed at the federal capital and 
continuing in independent existence with their own 
individual publications. The former must not be con- 



222 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

fused with the National Academy of Sciences, which we 
shall consider presently. 

The National Academy of Sciences 

This Academy is equivalent to our own Academie des 
Sciences, or to the London Royal Society, and we shall 
consider it at some length. 

It is recent, having been established by an act of 
Congress on March 3, 1863, during the War of Seces- 
sion; thus it is barely more than half a century old. 
Its act of establishment gives it an official character, 
though rather vaguely so. In the minds of its founders 
it was destined to serve as the scientific council of the 
government, furnishing it with reports on such ques- 
tions as were put to it. Up to a very recent period, this 
function had remained only virtual, as it was being ful- 
filled by the scientific bureaus of the various depart- 
ments of state. The present war seems about to change 
this situation. In fact, at its session of April, 1916, the 
Academy unanimously resolved to offer its services to 
the President of the United States in the interest of 
national preparedness, and Mr. Wilson accepted the 
offer. The plan of the Academy is to coordinate the 
scientific resources of the various institutions of edu- 
cation and research, utilizing them for the prosperity 
and security of the nation. The above-mentioned reso- 
lution resulted in the creation of a National Research 
Council, w^hich has already extended its mission be- 
yond purely military problems so as to cover all kinds 
of industrial investigations or research in pure science.^ 

1 The Council was composed of scientists and expert engineers not only 
from the Academy but from the most various institutions. It formed a cen- 
tral committee at Washington under the presidency of Mr. G. E. Hale, the 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 223 

However, until then the Academy had existed much 
more as a private society than as an institution of the 
state. It has received no subsidy, so to speak, and is 
supported by the membership fees. It has no oflSces of 
its own, and it avails itself of the hospitality of the 
National Museum for its meetings at Washington. 
During the last few years, the construction of a man- 
sion of its own has often been referred to as one of its 
most imperative requirements, but curiously enough, in 
this country of rapid realization and rich and numerous 
endowments, the desire is yet far from accomplish- 
ment, although the local academies are often sumptu- 
ously installed. Federal institutions hardly interest 
individuals and Congress does not seem to have much 
affection for pure science. The Academy disposes of a 
few rather modest endowments for the carrying on of 
research work. Alexander Agassiz, whose generosity 
is evident in many circumstances, bequeathed to it 
some years ago fifty thousand dollars to use as it pleases. 
Thus it is seen that generally speaking the Academy 
holds a very modest position from a material point of 
view in relation to a number of institutions of infinitely 
less importance. 

Its composition has been modified several times since 
its foundation, when the number of its members was 
fixed at fifty; in 1870 it was raised to a hundred and 
fifty and every year ten new members were elected until 

well-known astronomer, and also local committees. In attaching to itself 
workers from outside its membership on such a broad basis and in a spirit 
of complete equality, it has given a very beautiful example of truly liberal 
and scientific spirit. 

Considerable sums have been already placed at its disposal by private 
initiative; $100,000 by the Troop College of Technology of Pasadena, and 
$500,000 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 



224 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

the maximum was reached. By a new modification 
voted in 1915, the maximum of members has been 
raised to two hundred and fifty and the number of 
annual elections to fifteen. 

In 1916 there were about a hundred and fifty mem- 
bers distributed among the following nine sections: 

Members in 1916 

1. Mathematics 11 

2. Astronomy 11 

3. Physics and Engineering Sciences 26 

4. Chemistry 25 

5. Geology and Paleontology 26 

6. Botany 10 1 

7. Zoology and animal morphology 20 ^ 

8. Physiology and pathology 17 ^ 

9. Anthropology and psychology 10 * 

The Academy members are scattered throughout the 
United States; one recently published list shows that: 

Eighteen members belonged to the federal scientific establish- 
ments at Washington. 

Twenty-three members belonged to Harvard University, 
Cambridge, Mass. 

Fifteen members belonged to Yale University, New Haven. 

1 Messrs. N. L. Britton, D. H. Campbell, J. M. Coulter, W. S. Farlow. 
G. L. Goodale, C. S. Sargent, E. F. Smith, R. Thaxter, W. Trelease. 

2 Messrs. J. A. Allen, W. E. Castle, E. G. Conklin, W. H. Dale, C. B. 
Davenport, H. H. Donaldson, R. G. Harrison, H. S. Jennings, F. R. Lillie, 
F. P. Mall, E. L. Mark, C. H. Merriam, T. H. Morgan, E. S. Morse, H. F. 
Osborn, G. H. Parker, A. E. Verrill, C. D. Walcott, W. M. Wheeler, and 
E. B. Wilson. Messrs. L. O. Howard and R. Pearl were elected to this 
section in 1916. 

3 J. J. Abel, F. G. Benedict, W. B. Cannon, R. H. Chittenden, W. T. 
Councilman, S. Flexner, W. H. Howell, J. Loeb, G. Lusk, F. P. Mall, S. J. 
Meltzer, L. B. Mendel, T. M. Prudden, Thomas Smith, V. C. Vaughan, 
W. H. Welch, H. C. Wood. 

* The total gives 156 members. But a good many of them are counted 
twice over as they belong to two sections at the same time (paleontologists, 
for example, to those of geology and zoology). 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 225 

Thirteen members belonged to Chicago University. 

Eleven members belonged to Columbia University, New York. 

Ten members belonged to Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. 

Five members belonged to the laboratories of the Carnegie 
Institution. 

Four members belonged to California University. 

Three members each belonged to the following universities: 
Wisconsin, Madison; Cornell, Ithaca, N. Y.; L.Stanford, 
California; Clark, Worcester, Mass.; and to the Rocke- 
feller Institute, New York. 

Two members each belonged to the following universities: 
Princeton, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Northwestern 
(Evanston, HI.) and the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology. 

Owing to the fact that its members are so scattered, 
the Academy cannot hold meetings at frequent inter- 
vals. It meets regularly twice a year, once at Easter at 
Washington, and once toward the end of November in 
a locality which changes every year. Beside business 
matters, the meetings are devoted to individual com- 
munications from members and to symposia on specific 
questions. 

The Academy had honored me by an invitation to 
attend its session of Easter, 1916, and there I had the 
pleasure of meeting, as also at the American Philo- 
sophical Society, a large number of the most eminent 
scientific men in America. Seventy-two members, 
that is to say, about half the membership of the Acad- 
emy, attended the meeting; some had come from 
California, having crossed the entire continent in order 
to be present at the meeting. The symposium had been 
organized for that session by Professor W. M. Davis of 
Harvard on the Methodical Exploration of the Pacific. 
A series of specialists expounded the plan of research 
which should be organized in the fields of the various 
sciences in view of setting up a program and collect- 



226 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

ing funds later. The Academy is preparing an exten- 
sive and long undertaking in order to study the ocean 
and the territories emerging from it, and to consider 
problems of the physical and natural sciences, from 
that of gravity to those of the nature of fauna and flora 
and questions of ethnography. 

The elections are carried out according to a system 
analogous to that of the London Royal Society. A 
person cannot become a candidate unless his name has 
already been proposed by the majority of a section or 
of the Council of the Academy; this allows discussion 
only on men whose value is recognized by the experts, 
and the sections are usually of a sufficiently large mem- 
bership to prevent exclusion of anyone from personal 
animosity. It is important to notice that it is specialists 
who designate members first, such designation being 
in fact the only r61e of the sections. 

At the annual Easter session, all the names which 
have been printed on the list and voted upon by the 
sections are submitted to a first vote by the members 
of the Academy, a vote which cannot include more than 
fifteen names. The results of this preliminary vote are 
classed according to the votes obtained, and thus a list 
of preference is secured. 

Every name in this list is then finally voted on, sep- 
arately and in the order on the list of preference, and 
the candidate is declared elected when he receives two 
thirds of the votes given with twenty-five as a minimum. 
The order on the list of preference is followed until 
fifteen have been elected or until the total number of 
members reaches the figure of two hundred and fifty. 

No method of election could change human nature 
or suppress intrigues, but the one just mentioned ren- 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 227 

ders intrigues as difficult as possible, instead of putting 
a premium upon them — as is the case with our own 
Academy — by avoiding the method of direct appli- 
cation for candidature. It is infinitely more difficult to 
take a group of specialists by surprise than the member- 
ship of an assembly dominated by incompetents; it is 
true that often specialists have the defect of one-sided 
and very exclusive views and that, like all men, they 
may be partial. But as the greater part of the sections 
include twenty members respectively, the partiality 
of two or three either in favor or against a given candi- 
dature has no serious chance of causing the appearance 
or the removal of a name on the first list of candidates. 

To my mind, then, it is a great advantage that the 
membership of the Academy should be so numerous. 
Mr. G. E. Hale, its very eminent foreign secretary, has 
devoted an extremely interesting article to the subject 
of the role of Academies in Science ^^ and has made a 
comparative study of the academies of large countries. 
He brings powerful reasons for not making academies 
into very closed bodies and chooses in favor of the 
system of the London Royal Society — the English 
equivalent of our '' Academie des Sciences'' — which has 
four hundred and eighty members at the present time. 

In Europe, "on the continent," he says, "I have 
known of scientists who did not form part of academies 
and did not receive the aid of neighboring universities, of 
men who could not be elected into the academies be- 
cause the number of members of the latter was too 
limited or their traditions unchanging. In England, 
such men would have been admitted into the Royal 

1 Science, November 14, 1913, February 6 and December 25, 1914, 
January 1, 1915. 



228 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

Society as fellows, and the Society would have been 
happy to publish their memoirs or to aid them in some 
other manner. . . . By taking in a larger proportion 
of young men actively engaged in research, the Academy 
has increased its contact with living issues, and thus 
made itself more truly representative of American Sci- 
ence. . . . The purpose of an academy" — adds Mr. 
Hale — "is not merely to confer distinction by election 
to membership, but to constitute a working body." 

The National Academy of Sciences aims to include in 
its membership all American scientists of distinction. 
It has an indisputable moral authority in the United 
States, but exercises no effective power. Accordingly, 
it does not obstruct in the least, the growth of the vari- 
ous scientific institutions, the universities or the estab- 
lishments which we have reviewed and each of which 
has an independent existence. 

As can be seen, the constitution of the National 
Academy of Sciences differs greatly from that of our 
Academy of Sciences, and to me it seems better adapted 
to present conditions. Our Academy bears the weight 
of a past which has been glorious but which chains it 
the more so that, in contrast with its American sister- 
academy, it is not free in its movements. It is joined 
to the other sections of the Institute, and the latter not 
being as a whole founded to serve the scientific spirit, 
is more given to conservatism than to audacious re- 
forms. ^ Whereas so many things have been renovated 

1 A witticism of Monsieur Paul Bourget's, of some years ago, has been 
recently revived (Leon Bloy, Au seuil de V Apocalypse, p. 36 and P. S., Le 
Temps, August 11, 1916) to which the war has given a particularly piquant 
relief, and which expresses, as it were, the paroxysm of the state of mind in 
question: "Four barriers," wrote Monsieur Bourget, "separate us from 
barbarism: the great German general staff, the English House of Lords, 
the Institute of France, and the Vatican." 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 229 

during the century, the Institute still keeps, without 
any retouch so to speak, the statutes granted to it by 
Bonaparte, with the costume designed for the pompous 
ceremonies of the Consulate. The Academy of Sci- 
ences retains its eleven sections with six members each, 
established in accordance with the state of knowledge 
at the end of the eighteenth century, but of which the 
numerical equality and limitations are no longer in 
harmony with the relations among the sciences at 
present. 

Up to about five or six years ago, it was necessary 
that one should live within the circle of the Paris forti- 
fications in order to be a member at all, and this simple 
detail in the regulations inspired by a period when there 
were no trains in existence has had disastrous conse- 
quences for the vitality of science in the provinces. The 
Academy abolished this restriction, though tardily and 
not without timidity and reservations. The discussion 
in which the whole Institute took part has shown the 
excessive importance, in the eyes of a good number of 
its members, of the possibility of depreciating the 
value of the title which they hold by the multiplication 
of the number of its holders — a preoccupation which 
recalls the Duke of Saint-Simon rather than modern 
society. 

Under its present constitution, the Academy receives 
almost all its members too late, the larger part after 
the really productive portion of their career has passed. 
Thus, its influence which is in fact very great, is exer- 
cised by men the majority of whom have already passed 
the age of enterprise and the outlook toward the future. 
Unavoidably, a community dominated by aged men 
has the tendency to distrust whatever seems to upset 



£30 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

the conceptions to which it is accustomed. Particu- 
larly among the sciences, if one looks back a century, 
how many successive transformations and cases of a 
rise and fall of theories, that seemed to explain every- 
thing, will one not observe — of theories that have had 
their moment of great fertility but that have yielded 
their place to others ! The examples would be numerous 
in Chemistry, Physics, and Biology. It may be the 
atomic theory, the optics of Fresnel, and later that of 
Maxwell and the theory of the electrons; it may be 
Darwinism. The conceptions of tomorrow do not de- 
stroy those of yesterday; but in order to contemplate 
the relations of phenomena in a new light one must be 
capable of sufficient self-detachment. Doubtless, the 
mind of the scientist is aware of the essentially transi- 
tory and relative role of the hypothesis. Yet despite 
everything, one becomes attached to the hypothesis one 
has employed during one's maturity, and one becomes 
more or less incapable of thinking without it, especially 
of foreseeing the fortunes and fertility of those theories 
that are to succeed it. To mention but one example 
only, the Academy had for long taken a hostile attitude 
to the Darwinian movement and its section of Zoology 
refused to receive Darwin himself. 

It is not desirable that the scientific body, endowed 
as it is with the greatest moral authority, be composed 
chiefly of men who are at the end of their careers. Such 
a condition leads inevitably to a gerontocracy tending 
to inhibit the Han of the younger generations. It is 
necessary that the latter should have all the possible 
means of action at their disposal; even so, they en- 
counter not a few obstacles to progress. Without at all 
suggesting that scientists whose whole career has dem- 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 231 

onstrated their excellence should be excluded, we urge 
that these should be associated in a greater measure 
with young men, and that the latter should be placed 
in a lesser degree under the tutelage of their elders, or 
more exactly of six of their elders in each science, who 
are never, all of them, great men and who owing to their 
small number are possessed of excessive power. 

Owing to the fact that access to the Academy is so 
restricted and that it depends to such a degree upon 
circumstances, the title of a member of the Institute 
becomes above all a personal distinction, the conse- 
cration of a career, a sort of superior decoration, the 
prestige of which in the eyes of the public is doubtless 
the sign of a certain idealism, but the very difficult 
conquest of it has the effect of restricting the freedom 
in mental direction of more than one scientist. There 
are thus several circumstances to which the Academy 
is indifferent in appearance but to whose evil effect its 
influence contributes, in a more or less decisive fashion, 
respecting the grading and the selection of members, 
that is to say, in the last analysis, respecting scientific 
production. 

The function of the Academy nowadays, since science 
is cultivated outside it and since many specialized 
scientific societies are in existence, is above all that of 
coordinating the various sciences together, and this 
would be better accomplished and in a more wholesome 
fashion, were the gates of the Academy more widely 
open. 

It appears to me then that the Academy of Sciences, 
following the example of the Royal Society and the 
American Academy, should enlarge itself, redistribute 
its sections, determine for them neither equality of 



232 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

numbers nor any numerical limitation, but merely es- 
tablish a high maximum of membership, a maximum 
which generally should not be attained. Vacancies 
would thus always exist and the regular access to mem- 
bership be possible to men of value as soon as their 
excellence is duly ascertained and at the period of their 
full activity in research. So far as this point is con- 
cerned, a method of election such as the one in vogue at 
the Royal Society or at the American Academy would 
regularize the automatic renewal and invigoration of 
the institution; it would moreover have the advantage 
of suppressing the direct application for candidature; 
for it is much more natural that a scientific body should 
discover of its own accord the men whom it would like 
to have as members. 

The American Association for the Advancement 
OF Science, and Specialized Scientific Societies 

Nowadays, scientific societies in the United States 
are extremely numerous and more and more special- 
ized; to enumerate them would be out of the question; 
some are local, ^ others are national, but owing to the 
immense extent of the country, the latter tend to 
create local sections in the large cities. 

I will say a few words about the role of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, which is 
equivalent to our own French Association. It was 
founded in 1848, on the model of the British Associa- 

^ Among the oldest, I will simply mention, so far as biology is con- 
cerned, the Academy of Natural Science of Philadelphia which celebrated its 
centenary in 1912; it has an important library and its publications are 
considerable. The Boston Society of Natural History dates from 1830. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 233 

tion; ^ it has two classes of members: professional 
scientists or fellows, and others who are simply in- 
terested in science, or members. It is specially inter- 
ested in serving as a connecting link between many 
societies that are specialized. It meets twice a year at 
different cities, once in August and once in the last 
week of December. The latter meeting is the more 
important in that a very large number of societies 
meet during that convocation week and the majority 
of them in the same locality as the American Associa- 
tion itself. Thus, in December, 1915, eighteen societies 
met simultaneously at Columbus, Ohio. This is in- 
deed a very fortunate habit, and the congresses of the 
French Association would gain a great deal if by an 
understanding with the special societies the annual 
reunion of the former could be made to coincide with 
the meetings of the latter. 

Every year, the American Association organizes 
symposia in its various sections, by means of which 
important questions may be examined from varied 
points of view. 

A European is a little confused by the multiplicity 
of the meetings which an American scientist is invited 
to attend every year, in very distant parts of the Union. 
The period has passed when Congress hesitated to an- 
nex the territories of the Far West because of their 
great distance and the enormous time which would be 
required for a trip from those regions to Congress at 

1 It is divided into nine sections: A. Mathematics and Astronomy; 
B. Physics; C. Chemistry; D, Mechanics and Engineering Sciences; E. 
Geology and Geography; F. Zoology; G. Botany; H. Anthropology; I. 
Sociology and Economic Science. 



^34 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

Washington. But despite the great facility of travel in 
America — the continent may be crossed in four days 
— the formidable distances to be covered constitute a 
great obstacle in the way of scientific coordination, and 
now that the region of the Pacific is developing at a 
fast rate, it has a tendency to form its own associations 
and societies. 



CHAPTER XIX 

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 

Lessons to be drawn for France. Necessity of a 

Renewal of the Agencies and Structures 

OF OUR Intellectual Life 

" The world has been remade 
during the last half -century ." 

Excess of "Stateism" in our university life. Rector or President? Liberty 
as the condition of public support. Organization of student life. The socie- 
ties of the friends of the universities; how to vitalize them. Excess of in- 
dividualism among the students, the professors, and the instruction. Pure 
and applied science. L'Ecole Polytechnique, its organization and present 
condition. Instruction and the organization of research. Institutes devoted 
exclusively to research. The French universities must be greatly developed 
after the war. They should be more varied and be mutually complementary 
and not copy nor compete with one another. 

We must renew our entire national structure, and not least, our scientific 
organization the form of which no longer responds to the needs of today and 
above all of tomorrow. 

rriHE author desires to defend himself against the 
-*■ possible criticism that he wrongly ascribes to his 
readers a complete ignorance of university and scientific 
life in the United States and that he is under the illusion 
of having discovered America in this respect. He is per- 
fectly aware that these matters are familiar to a certain 
number of Frenchmen and that they have been treated 
in more than one book. But judging from what he him- 
self knew or was ignorant of before visiting the United 
States, he thought it would not be unprofitable, and in 
any case would clarify matters, to give a general ac- 
count of the topic where the relation between the vari- 
ous parts would be made apparent, 

235 



236 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

The moment has now arrived for drawing conclusions 
from this account. So far as America itself is concerned, 
these conclusions have been indicated in the course of 
the various chapters, especially in the chapter which 
brings the first part to an end, and I content myself 
with calling attention once more to two general fea- 
tures which emerge from the facts already considered; 
first, the rapidity and amplitude of the recent growth 
of American scientific life; it is only now that the 
fruits of this movement will really ripen; and secondly, 
the great enlargement in the notion of the university 
which, advancing beyond our consecrated number of 
five faculties, covers at present all the branches of 
modern society where a profound intellectual culture is 
called for, and spreads the methods of positive science 
and the idea of its power everywhere and in generous 
measure. 

I should like, on the contrary, to call attention to some 
lessons which I think can be drawn for the benefit of 
France from the facts already ascertained. A revision 
of all the elements of our national life is absolutely in- 
dispensable at the present moment, to the end of ob- 
taining a better yield from our national organism after 
the war. A comparative study would supply a most 
solid basis for this purpose. Not that we should, purely 
and simply, introduce into our country institutions from 
the outside, whether American, or English, or German. 
Even had these latter been perfect, such a plan would 
have been none the less impossible. For their excel- 
lence lies above all in their relations with surrounding 
conditions, with traditions and customs of the coun- 
tries whence they spring. But it might be useful to 
point out certain contrasts and to analyze them. Of 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 237 

course I can only just touch on certain points by way of 
illustration; to develop them would require a whole book. 

The first and most significant of contrasts in the 
field of university life is that between our French etat- 
isme and the vigor of private American initiative, a 
heritage of the English tradition. So far as higher 
education in France is concerned, hardly anything 
solid has been done — at least up to a very recent period 
— outside the State. Private higher instruction, when- 
ever authorized by the law, has been dominated by 
political considerations that have vitiated it without 
giving it any real vitality. However, quite recently, 
private initiative has begun to produce some interest- 
ing institutions, such for example as the ^^Ecole Libre 
des Sciences Politiques." In the field of scientific re- 
search, the Institut Pasteur above all, is a witness to 
what private initiative is capable of producing in 
France when accompanied by the benevolent support of 
the public. 

But freedom will not be less fertile if granted more 
generously to the state institutions themselves. Our 
universities have been too closely subservient to and 
shackled by the meddling tyranny of central power in 
the greater part of their activities, even the most in- 
significant. We are not proposing to emancipate them 
completely. In the mechanism of our habits, the State 
is the only power sufficient to keep them alive. But 
the American example is suggestive in so far as it may 
contribute toward introducing a much stronger dose of 
initiative and autonomy into French university life. 

The following seems to me a very significant fact: 
the way in which a French university is controlled or 



£38 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

rather placed under close tutelage. An American uni- 
versity has a president at its head who is armed with 
considerable and perhaps too autocratic powers but 
who may and ought to use all his energy for the secur- 
ing of the interests of the university, without having 
to take care of other interests as well. He is his own 
man. With us, the Rector who acts in the name of the 
university and presides over its Council does not issue 
from it at all. He is a simple functionary who receives 
his powers from the Ministry of Public Instruction, 
and who must administer the university on behalf of 
the State before he would ever dare not only to take 
any initiative on behalf of the university but even to 
defend its interests, in so far as these might differ from 
those of the State o Neither can he devote all his activity 
to the university for he carries besides the very heavy 
burden of secondary education, and to a certain extent, 
of primary education in his academy. That there 
should be a rector representing the State in an academy 
is very natural. But every university should have its 
own head who speaks its language and works for the 
realization of its projects, discussing matters with the 
rector on a footing of equality, while the rector him- 
self should be a public minister. In Prussia, a country 
which is not generally regarded as the land of liberty, 
the State is represented in the university by a curator 
only; the rector is a direct and sovereign representa- 
tive of the university itself. The same is true of other 
countries. Our rectors represent the survival of the 
entire Napoleonic regime and the complete subordina- 
tion of higher education not even to the central au- 
thority but really to the central administration; the 
university is placed under the power of the bureaucracy. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 239 

The rector, unlike the president of an American uni- 
versity, cannot concentrate his mind upon the advance- 
ment of the interests of the university; he can only 
see to it that its aspirations are in accordance with the 
views which prevail in the offices of the Rue de Grenelle. 
It is only by the rarest exception that actually the Uni- 
versity of Paris has as a rector the man who has been 
the principal reformer of higher education in France 
and who incarnates the university itself for us. M. 
Liard has, by his personal authority (even in opposi- 
tion to the central administration), by his ability in 
affairs and by his devotion, served the University of 
Paris as a president after the American fashion. How- 
ever that may be, we are directing our criticism not to 
any particular men but to a wholly illogical system. 
The only correct solution is that each university should 
have at its head a man who issues from it and entirely 
belongs to it. And his independence and facility of 
action will measure the degree of liberty and autonomy 
which the state will have granted to the universities. 

Such a measure of liberty is an indispensable con- 
dition for the establishment of a real contact and con- 
fidence between the public and the universities and for 
the winning of the effective support of the former for 
the latter. If the private universities in America have 
been able to live and grow on a scale that has been in- 
dicated, thanks to the inexhaustible generosity of in- 
dividuals, one of the principal reasons is that these 
latter are associated in the governments of the universi- 
ties and control them to a certain extent. The state 
universities themselves, despite the forces which have 
brought them about, are beginning to provide a scope 



U- 



240 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

for private action in their direction ^ and will enlarge 
it no doubt in the future, because they will not allow 
themselves to be deprived of the power represented by 
the mass of their alumni. 

The alumni! — there is a genuine point of contact 
with the public, a point which we have done nothing to 
create. The universities, clothed in the passive in- 
sensibility of the state with respect to individuals, are 
quite indifferent to those whom they have instructed. 
They have made no effort to keep any trace of them, 
much less to bring them back. Once the parchment 
has been delivered by the universities, or rather by the 
state through them into the hands of the candidates, 
these latter become strangers, just as they were before 
crossing the threshold of the university. 

And similarly throughout the stay of the student in 
the university, where could the least effort be discovered 
for organizing his life, for establishing even then a link 
between him and the university .? Through a complete 
misunderstanding of the psychological aspect of the 
case, the authorities have suppressed all the ceremonies 
and reunions which might have awakened in the stu- 
dent the idea of the academic community. Even then, 
the student is ignored by the university; such culture 
has with force and justice been called inhuman culture 
by Mr. Barrett Wendell, whose judgment cannot be 
suspected of malevolence. 

The example of the American and the English uni- 
versities should lead us to innovations in this respect, 
not to any servile imitation, but to an adaptation of 
new instruments to our habits so that we might concern 
ourselves with the material condition of our students 

1 Consider for example the biological station of San Diego (Chap. XIV). 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 241 

in order to improve it and to cease leaving them com- 
pletely to themselves. The foreigners who will attend 
our institutions after the war, may, by importing their 
customs too, serve as a ferment and as guides to our 
students. It is desirable that we encourage them. And 
we should moreover help them to find in France an 
equivalent of what they have had at home, and to 
change the needs of our own students. Private initia- 
tive must be stimulated and encouraged to this end, 
for it is the only effective agent. But it must be able 
to rely upon the sympathy and support of the university 
itself. 

When the universities were officially reconstructed 
twenty years ago, the need was felt of bringing them 
closer to the public. But the attempts made have 
suffered on the one hand from the inertia of the public, 
and on the other from the difficulty we feel in stripping 
ourselves of our customs of governmentalism. To this 
the history of the Societies of the Friends of the Uni- 
versities bears witness. The earliest was founded at 
Lyons, distinguished in France as a city in which private 
initiative is particularly welcomed, and the society was 
perhaps the most vigorous of all. These societies 
should have taken rapid steps forward; instead, almost 
everywhere the initial effort weakened instead of gain- 
ing strength, and today the greater part of the members 
of these societies are professors, who are by definition, 
friends of the university, but who, according to a very 
accurate remark of one of my colleagues, endow the as- 
sociations with an autophagous character. 

However, the idea out of which they were born was 
excellent. The public should have been associated with 
them to a greater extent, but the societies failed to avail 



242 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

themselves of the factors best tending toward vitality. 
As it appears, the former students of the universities 
were completely neglected in the enlistment of members 
for the societies, and yet were they not preeminently 
suited as friends who ought to be attracted and kept? 
Before everything, the attempt should have been made 
to give to these societies a real character instead of 
letting them exist as abstractions. There is yet time 
to reform matters and these associations should be 
embodied in buildings which might serve as hospitable 
homes for the alumni, stripped of the stern austerity 
of the faculties themselves and helping every one to 
traverse the first stages of his career. The associations 
ought to bear some resemblance to the Harvard Clubs 
and similar clubs. If established on this basis, would 
not private initiative generously undertake to install 
them and animate them at the start .^^ For once the 
inner and concrete life starts, they will develop by 
themselves, through the advantages which they would 
offer to their members and the memories which they 
would evoke in them. 

On the other hand, the associations were not prop- 
erly connected with the life of the university, and here 
governmentalism is to blame, for it is never inclined to 
give up the least bit of its authority. As it is, they have 
no regular share in the work of the Councils.^ 

1 This is a question which concerns not only the universities but the 
whole fabric of public instruction. However, the idea is beginning to dawn 
that the Superior Council of Instruction must include citizens representing 
the principal social groups and not only the staff of instruction or the repre- 
sentatives of the administration. We must add, in extenuation of the form 
of existing institutions that the development of liberty was hampered by 
the clerical problem and by the necessity of defending the secular State 
which was attacked more in the field of university life than elsewhere. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 243 

Finally, so far as their internal life is concerned, these 
societies were often too much absorbed by the profes- 
sional members of the universities when these should 
have served as discreet advisers v/ithout assuming con- 
trol of affairs. 

In a general manner, we should consider without fear 
the introduction of a certain amount of outside control 
in the administration of the greater part of the ma- 
chinery of the universities. It is planned to establish 
institutes of applied science in the faculties of science 
and one of the interesting suggestions is to introduce 
into the councils of such institutes representatives of 
the industries interested in their prosperity. 

The excess of individualism, not less than govern- 
mentalism, is one of the weak points of our university 
and scientific life, as it is indeed of the entire French 
community. This spirit of individualism is manifest 
everywhere; in the life of the students in the first place, 
in that it is solitary and knows almost nothing of activi- 
ties undertaken in common such as those already 
noticed, that fill the life of the American student. The 
few existing associations are quite young and have 
scarcely passed the period of infancy. They cannot be 
too warmly encouraged. But the best way to create this 
sociability, that is so desirable, would be to organize 
student clubs (either for men or for women) pleasant 
and comfortable, and also useful by means of the advan- 
tages which they would provide in their character as 
associations. The Americans are going to set us an ex- 
ample by organizing in Paris, as they are now trying to 
do, the American University Union. Our French youths 
cannot help being urged in the same direction when 



244 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

they see with their own eyes how their friends organize 
their activities. In any case, the spirit of solidarity is 
not less strong in France than elsewhere among young 
people, but it must be awakened by a common life. 
Comradeship in the JEcole Normale and the Ecole Poly- 
technique is as much alive and intense as, if not more 
than, in any foreign university; it results from a life in 
common such as is absolutely lacking in the life of an 
average student in Paris or in any of our provincial 
universities. 

Individualism is not less extreme among the teaching 
body. In the large cities particularly, the professors 
are too isolated from one another. There is no centre 
where they may meet and become acquainted in a 
field of activity outside their professional occupations. 
There is nothing among us to remind one of the 
Faculty Clubs, and Colonial Clubs, which create such 
an atmosphere of cordial spirit in American univer- 
sity life. 

Finally, individualism prevails to excess in profes- 
sional life itself. The freedom which is justly granted 
to a professor in the conception and carrying on of in- 
struction leads to an excess such that each one goes his 
own way, ignorant of that of his neighbor. Coordina- 
tion in instruction is gradually diminishing. Each chair 
is independent. The Faculty of Sciences in Paris, 
Darboux used to say when he was its dean, is a feudal 
body. The various professors live in their laboratories, 
somewhat as the barons of the Middle Ages used to live 
in their chateaus, without concerning themselves with 
one another and without joining their efforts together 
sufficiently with the intent of achieving a common 
result. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 245 

Scientific research proper accommodates itself to such 
habits, because in principle it is essentially individualis- 
tic. Still, it suffers a great deal in that it requires more 
and more an expensive and multiple apparatus which 
would be secured much more easily and completely 
by an association of efforts that would avoid any useless 
duplication of function. America has sometimes the 
reputation in Europe of being a country of prodigality 
and waste. It is sufficient to have seen the American 
university libraries — the general library of the univer- 
sity and the laboratory libraries — in order to perceive 
that there is infinitely more order and economy, and in 
consequence, an infinitely greater amount of utilizable 
resources in America than here. Without diminishing 
in any respect the liberty of each professor in his re- 
search work, it is imperative that the life of the vari- 
ous laboratories be better coordinated. 

But this is truer still of the teaching, and above all of 
that teaching which is fundamental. Without that con- 
dition, a genuine instruction of students is impossible. 
Teaching must concern itself with the average person 
who needs to be directed methodically. Exceptional 
individuals are more or less able to dispense with guides, 
but after all they are a very small minority. And yet 
our system of superior instruction seems to have been 
made for these only. For such individuals are provided 
more liberally than elsewhere with higher and even un- 
surpassed courses, yet the very foundation on which 
this superior level should be established is far from being 
properly laid. 

From the social point of view, power is obtained 
chiefly by the organization which strives to obtain 
plentiful returns of average value. Superior people es- 



246 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

cape all systems and triumph over difficulties and de- 
ficiencies; average people come to nothing if they are 
not systematically helped to reach a level where they 
may render important service to the community. The 
power of Germany for example, is due above all to a 
useful development and judicious utilization of individ- 
uals of average capacity. 

We arrive at similar conclusions with respect to an- 
other field where the American example is equally 
striking; I have reference to the place of the applied 
sciences in the universities and chiefly of the engineering 
and agricultural sciences. Their importance is continu- 
ally increasing, and not only do American universities 
assure the primary preparation of technicians in these 
fields but further they become centres of research 
through their laboratories and the special institutes 
which are attached to them; the Mellon Institute is 
particularly interesting in this respect. 

In France, on the contrary, the universities have been 
conceived uniquely as instruments of pure science, and 
it is only very recently that they have turned more or 
less timidly toward the applied sciences, and moreover 
with quite insufficient resources. When the Revolution 
reorganized education, it isolated applied science within 
special schools access to which soon became very diffi- 
cult owing to the introduction of competitive exami- 
nations. One of the consequences of this has been a 
profound anaemia in the faculties of science, from which 
almost the entire youth turned away; in fact, all the 
practical careers to which the study of science might 
lead were recruited outside the faculties. At least the 
preliminary theoretical instruction which is necessary 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 247 

for these professions should have been left to the Facul- 
ties of Science, even if we grant that the purely technical 
preparation might have been left in the hands of special 
schools. And yet, whenever instruction of this sort was 
required, it was organized specially outside the Faculties 
of Science. And now we face the paradox that the 
Ecole Polytechnique in contradiction with its name and 
the purpose of its foundation has become a sort of a 
faculty of pure sciences, in which application properly 
speaking plays a very limited part. 

The Scole Polytechnique is an institution without its 
like in other countries, one that has for a long time al- 
most monopolized French science in a most brilliant 
fashion and which even today makes grave encroach- 
ments upon the scientific recruitment of our universi- 
ties. The competitive examination which guards its 
gates exercises a powerful attraction upon youth and it 
is one of the essential factors in the great growth of our 
mathematical instruction. It results in a very severe 
selection, bringing to the school a student body of ex- 
cellent quality. In fact, the strength of the school lies 
more in the quality of its students than in the 
curriculum. 

The latter, as perpetuated by tradition is much to be 
criticized from the points of view both of pure science 
and of its applications. The courses are exclusively 
theoretical and chiefly mnemonic; one is even tempted 
to call them psittacizing when one recalls the system of 
repeated questions on which the students are solely 
judged. Success comes to the one who repeats most 
faithfully on the blackboard the literal content of 
courses hastily digested; it depends on the speed of the 
assimilation and on the physical resistance to a regime 



248 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

which leaves almost no part to reflection or to original- 
ity of mind and involves nothing of contact with reality 
or experience. The system, if well applied, would suit 
mathematics at most; but it is absurd to apply it to 
such sciences as chemistry, and to cast them in the same 
mould as analysis or rational mechanics, without 
bringing laboratory work to bear. 

How could an intellectual culture of this sort prepare 
men, who are even well-endowed such as those generally 
furnished to the Scole Polytechnique by the competitive 
examination, to analyze reality? Their minds have 
formed the habit of neglecting the observation of things 
and of reducing the most complex of questions to a 
small set of mathematical syllogisms. Of course, the 
education of an engineer should embrace a considerable 
portion of mathematics as an indispensable instrument, 
but above all it must orient itself toward experimental 
reality. 1 

Moreover, though a solid scientific instruction be use- 
ful as an introduction to very different applications, we 
have however the paradox that it is a grading obtained 
by a total adding of examination points which decides 
the career that the graduating student will choose from 
among the varied and heterogeneous group introduced 
to him by the school, whereas the special aptitude of 
the student does not influence the selection. It would 
be quite reasonable, for example, that engineers special- 
izing in explosives should be recruited preferably on 

1 From this point of view, mathematical instruction as given in om* ad- 
vanced schools of engineering and principally in the Ecole Polytechnique is 
on the whole too advanced and too theoretical. There is a confusion be- 
tween that which is necessary to the masses and that which interests but 
a small intellectual aristocracy. 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 249 

the basis of their ability in chemistry. ^ This extreme 
presumed generahty of interests is in conformity more 
with conditions as they existed when the Ecole was 
founded in 1795 than with those today; and it is op- 
posed to the spirit of speciahzation dominant in in- 
creasing measure in the foreign schools. 

Finally, we should not forget that the annual selec- 
tion of two hundred students for the Ecole by competi- 
tive examination, though it may bring good material 
together, would immobilize for a period of two and often 
three years — the best years of youth in every respect 
— more than a thousand young men in tasks consisting 
of artificial exercises. So that however well the school 
might employ those who enroll in it, it has this to be said 
against it, namely, that to achieve this result, it risks 
the sterilization of two or three times as many individ- 
uals of whom many were about as able as those that 
have been received. How much better is the system of 
free admission into the universities, where abilities are 
manifested and classified, where tastes and aptitudes 
are formed and directed naturally to the appropriate 
special studies and where there is no pretension of 
stamping the twenty year old student in a final way 
and for all his life with the seal of this or that career. 

The old ideas which separated the pure from the ap- 
plied sciences and regarded only the former as worthy 
objects of study has the disadvantage not only of keep- 

^ Not many years ago, a considerable number of students used to drop 
out as the school finished and to utilize the knowledge they had acquired in 
following studies of their choice. This fact constitutes a serious argument in 
favor of the transformation of the Ecole into an institution which would 
open its doors much more broadly, and which there would be no reason to 
separate, as is being done today, from the universities. 



250 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

ing the mass of youth away from the universities, but 
of injuring science as such, in both its aspects, as pure 
and as appHed. The first must come in contact with 
the second in order that it may make progress and if 
kept at too great a distance from the latter, it runs the 
danger of becoming a mandarinate. Moreover, pure 
science can suit a very Hmited number of minds, and 
the only practical method of discovering these minds 
is a system of free selection from among many individ- 
uals. In a milieu which is necessarily limited like that 
of a school of pure science, the conditions for such a 
selection do not exist. Great men are not made by 
education; the problem is only how to discover them in 
the large mass, how not to choke them, and how to 
secure for them a free development through the surest 
methods. 

The most reasonable conception of a university, so 
far as science is concerned, is to secure a broad basis 
for the university by means of relatively elementary 
courses leading to varied and practical careers, and 
attracting the student public in a way which would 
permit a selection; then, at a higher level, the university 
should place advanced courses at the disposal of those 
who have been selected and chiefly an organization 
rendering research possible under favorable conditions. 
Above a certain level, instruction through courses ex 
cathedra is more or less futile. It is only the working in 
direct contact with reality that is fruitful. In this 
respect we are apt to consider advanced instruction in 
too absolute a fashion, as a process involving neces- 
sarily a professor. When the work of a scientist has 
received public recognition, if the public authorities 
decide to make a contribution in order to aid the scien- 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 251 

tist to go on with research and to stimulate others to the 
work of scientific investigation, they estabhsh a new 
chair at the Sorbonne with its paraphernaha of oral 
courses and, invariably, examinations and diplomas. 
But almost the last thing they think of organizing is a 
laboratory, and never sufficiently, although a labora- 
tory would have been the most necessary and urgent of 
things under the circumstances. We have a patent ex- 
ample in Pierre Curie, for whom, after his discovery of 
radium, a chair was established in the Sorbonne. But 
he died — prematurely it is true — without having the 
laboratory that was to him of all things the most 
indispensable. 

In propounding this view before a Committee of the 
Senate some years ago, I had the opportunity to see 
that certain among those Members of Parliament that 
are interested in the questions of higher education are 
still far from understanding the distinction that I have 
just made. And yet, what I am suggesting is not some- 
thing new; in all the large countries, the organization 
of scientific progress takes the form of the establish- 
ment of institutes devoted exclusively to research. 
France had shown the way a long time ago. The 
College de France and the Museum answer these con- 
ditions; however, oral instruction in them has been 
given too rigid a position, at least so far as the experi- 
mental sciences are concerned, and the laboratories 
have often been left in a lamentable condition. The 
Institut Pasteur is the model for all the great institu- 
tions of research that must be established when a new 
branch of science is being developed in the hands of a 
man of superior capacity. And there is no reason why they 
should be completely separated from the universities. 



252 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

While we lingered among the old pedagogical formu- 
lae, in respect of the organization of scientific research, 
Germany was busy establishing on an ample scale in 
the years before the war the Institutes of the Kaiser 
Wilhelm Gesellschaft. And America witnessed the birth 
of the Carnegie and Rockefeller Institutes, and within 
the universities, the establishment of research labora- 
tories such as the Wolcott Gibbs Laboratory of Har- 
vard and a certain number of others which are proof 
that the value of the principle in question had been 
fully recognized. 

Napoleon I had decided that the Faculty of Sciences 
of Paris, which in his eyes was chiefly a permanent com- 
mittee of examinations, should have eight professors. 
Moreover, these professors were not to be in its own 
right; two were from the Ecole Poly technique, two from 
the College de France, two from the Museum and two 
from the Colleges. The Faculty of Letters had an 
analogous composition. For a long time, the number 
of chairs remained stationary, as is testified by the 
announcements of courses dating from the middle of 
the nineteenth century which have been made public 
in various expositions. But today things have im- 
proved; the chairs and the courses have been multi- 
plied to a degree that has sometimes seemed scandalous 
to people occupying considerable administrative posts, 
as I have been able to observe. And yet our universities, 
especially those in the provinces, still remain of quite 
modest proportions when compared with foreign uni- 
versities where it is not rare to find two or three hun- 
dred professors and as many, if not more, assistants who 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 253 

complete the teaching and make it accessible to the 
students in every branch of thought. 

Our contemporaries have known the old Sorbonne; 
my generation, which is yet relatively young, has con- 
ducted its studies in the laboratories installed in the 
old dilapidated buildings which bordered the Rue St. 
Jacques. The new Sorbonne which is scarcely more than 
twenty years of age is a palace and looks like a whole 
world in comparison with the old buildings. But when 
we compare her with the size and the installations of 
the American universities, considered in this book, or 
with the large German universities, she seems rather 
small and — above all — choked and incapable of ex- 
tension. What shall we say then of our provincial uni- 
versities of which some at least should be able to bear 
comparison with the best foreign universities, and for 
the sake of the country's spiritual health, should equal 
that of Paris and counterbalance its influence! The 
Republic had done enormous good to higher education; 
in fact, it has practically created it. But no one should 
be deceived into thinking that it had a very great vision. 
The least trip outside France, the pilgrimage to Stras- 
bourg that we all hope soon to undertake would suffice 
to undeceive us. 

The present war has once more brought these prob- 
lems to the foreground. The practical value of science 
has been confirmed more forcefully than ever as a 
soiu'ce of power and wealth. Germany has drawn her 
aggressive audacity and above all her force of resistance 
less perhaps from the sickly exaltation of militarism 
than from the confidence in the resources which her 
scientific development assured to her. Where would 



254 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

she have been today if only her chemists had not real- 
ized the synthesis of nitrates in industry, indispensable 
as it is in the manufacture of explosives? And the fact 
that this was possible is due primarily to the prosperity 
of her universities. 

These considerations are not relevant to us only. 
Certainly, England has taken them into account and is 
preparing, in its turn, to make up for lost time. Its 
universities, its laboratories, its technical schools based 
on modern ideas and above everything on the fertility 
of the experimental method, will make a considerable 
advance. Italy, now actively renascent, is no longer 
blind to these signs. If then our universities, instead 
of being revived, equipped with the necessary tools, and 
supported financially as they deserve, be left to remain 
on the morrow of the peace as they are today, before 
long we shall lag far behind those nations which aspire 
not to dominate the world but to live an independent 
life without being the satellites of those countries that 
will produce and inevitably regulate the condition of 
the others. 

We should then think of developing our universities 
to quite vast proportions. What is aimed at is neither 
a luxury nor a chimera but a vital necessity. Yet, given 
the needs and the resources of the country, it is out of 
the question to attempt to establish fifteen gigantic and 
complete institutions. The effort must be concentrated 
on a smaller number. When the question of restoring 
the French universities was under consideration thirty 
years ago, the plan was to organize eight or nine large 
institutions only, in which it would have been possible 
to concentrate the existing resources. But owing to 
local interests which find such a strong support in the 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE ^55 

parliamentary regime, the plan failed, with the result 
that all the old groupings of faculties were transformed 
into universities and thus the effort was scattered. 
Doubtless, none of these universities is useless. They 
serve as centres of culture in the cities of the provinces 
which indeed need to be stimulated and stirred from 
the torpor into which excessive centralization in France 
has plunged them. But since the number of univer- 
sities is rather too large, and the distances separating 
them often small, they should aim at supplementing 
one another, if they are to live in a genuine fashion in- 
stead of competing against and imitating one another, 
to the loss of all. If for example, Grenoble owing to its 
geographical position lends itself particularly to the 
development of such branches of study as electro- 
technics, it would be absurd if all the fifteen universi- 
ties, following the example of Grenoble, tried to have 
institutes of electro-technics when four or five would be 
sufficient. Clermont-Ferrand can serve very well as a 
centre for the geological study of volcanic phenomena 
in connection with related facts such as the properties 
of mineral waters. Puy-de-D6me is the seat of a meteor- 
ological observatory which has been set working in an 
interesting direction by its founder, but chiefly by my 
regretted friend, Bernard Brunhes. We have there the 
conditions for a great development of the study of 
meteorology which it would be futile to attempt to 
emulate elsewhere. Every region of France ought to 
stimulate the growth of some particular branches of 
science, for the purposes of which a university would 
serve as a metropolis attracting masters and students 
from afar. The universities have a definite role to play 
in the necessary awakening of the spirit of regionalism 



^56 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

but on condition that they fit into the region and do not 
ignore the neighboring regions. The six hundred Ameri- 
can colleges and universities are not and will never be 
institutions of equivalent significance; the universities, 
which today are in the foreground, will even tend to 
diminish in number and to become more diversified. 
Similarly, the destiny of the various French universi- 
ties, if the circumstances are favorable, would seem to 
be to secure in every one the possibility of good funda- 
mental studies, for which great equipment is not re- 
quired. My own experience with my students who 
have come from different centres has taught me that 
often natural history is usually studied better in a 
modest faculty, like that of Besangon or Grenoble, 
than in Paris. The best condition is the presence of 
some good teachers, surrounded by a few students, and 
animated by the sacred fire. But for the purposes of 
specialization, a perfect and rich apparatus is neces- 
sary; there as elsewhere, division of labor and coordi- 
nation are imperative, and the spirit of imitation and 
sterile competition should be avoided. 

For anyone who returns from America to France, an 
impression which is not very pleasant but is very per- 
sistent accompanies the perception — reenforced by 
comparative observation — of the fineness and the pro- 
found virtues of our ancient race; it is the impression 
that our national fabric, intellectual as well as economic, 
is scanty and oldish. Our institutions were brilliant and 
fruitful a century ago; they were then ahead of their 
time. But we have remained content with our past 
glory without adapting ourselves sufficiently to the 
new conditions. The world has been remade during the 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 257 

last half-century and yet, in many respects, we are still 
cast in a mould which was fitting enough to the period 
of Louis-Philippe. It is better to admit this frankly 
and to analyze its causes than to delight in the illu- 
sions of a hourrage de cranes — to use an expression of 
the day — duping only ourselves. ^ 

This is true generally and not by reference to any 
particular aspect of social life; and it origmates from 
very profound causes. Without taking sides in a politi- 
cal dispute, I should say that it is the result of bourgeois 
mentality. The French bourgeoisie which has been in 
control for a century has encrusted itself in some way 
with genuine virtues that unfortunately are of second- 
ary value and kill vitality. A biologist would be tempted 
to compare this condition to an encystment or to a 
similar form of lethargic life or even to the life of the 
organisms trained to live in aquaria by means of a 
reduced diet and diminished nutritive reactions, which 
however lack the liveliness and the fertility of their 
free fellow-creatures. 

Its ideal has been to preserve the wealth already ac- 
quired, working to this end for the greatest possible 
security, turning away from adventure and the life of 
enterprise with its possibilities of loss but also with its 

1 After writing the above, I met a former student of mine who is a for- 
eigner, ripened by hard experience and long personal work, and who after 
having obtained all his scientific education in France (to which, by the way, 
he remains extremely attached) settled in England, two years ago. Quite 
spontaneously, he made many remarks to me, which were the fruit of his 
observations and which I had already been led to record here, and he asked 
me with sincere anxiety if France after the war would be sufficiently aware 
of the need to modernize all her life — a need which is so apparent to any- 
one who has lived in foreign countries recently. The conversation was for 
me a confirmation of the observations which I have brought forward here 
and a proof that they are in no way exaggerated. 



258 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

chances of success. It even scorns the occasions which 
are offered, as the recent history of our colonial rule 
proves. Instead of putting its savings into investment 
for the purpose of augmenting the wealth and the 
strength of France, it permits its banks to serve as 
sleeping partners in foreign enterprises and to arm 
other peoples who are thus enabled to procure weapons 
with which to attack us. 

Likewise, it has voluntarily relinquished the task of 
propagating the race in order to save itself from the 
trouble of producing new wealth, thus committing col- 
lective suicide. The people imitate and by indulging in 
the taste for comfort, expose the country to the most 
terrible danger of the hour. 

As a consequence, the bourgeoisie has been too in- 
different to whatever contributes to the renewing of 
the environment and everybody has been trying above 
all to maintain the state of things already realized with- 
out noticing that the latter, like a position turned by 
the enemy, falls to pieces by the mere changing of the 
external situation. The French bourgeoisie as a whole 
has been unaware of this fact, for it scarcely traveled 
at all. It thus saved the expense of the trip. I have 
more than once had this feeling expressed to me in 
conversation with people in the cities of the North, 
rich or poor. "What have you gained," they used to 
ask me, "by making such a long and expensive trip 
just to be present at a congress?" 

The same state of mind is responsible for the fact that 
the French public remains deaf to all appeals inviting 
it to take the initiative in tasks of public interest; it 
lacks the private initiative which in the Anglo-Saxon 
countries is ever awake, ever sure of the generous aid 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 259 

of the richer classes and is the source of the fundamental 
idealism of these peoples, despite the utilitarian picture 
which we paint of them. The French bourgeois prefers 
to let the State do whatever is necessary, while at the 
same time insisting on paying the smallest taxes possi- 
ble and is little concerned about using the resources 
placed by the State at his disposal. 

He is far from lacking culture; but, during the whole 
of the nineteenth century, his culture has been too ex- 
clusively literary, abstract and formal. It has given 
rise to a genuine finesse, an incontestable elegance of 
mind and has safeguarded the qualities of high-minded 
sentiments, bravery in danger and the broad feeling of 
human solidarity which reappear with all their force at 
the moment of a great crisis; the present war has 
furnished a magnificent proof of this. Yet a culture of 
this sort is not adequate to the conditions of modern 
life; notice also the fact that literature, in seeking to 
renew itself indefinitely, after having more or less ex- 
hausted the analysis of human nature, now begins to 
turn to the field of the more and more exceptional, thus 
gradually slipping into pathology. The limits of art are 
becoming indefinite, and literature (even when dis- 
sociated from the interloping productions wrongly 
attributed to us and of which we were ignorant be- 
cause these works were the product of foreign factories) 
has a rather unhealthy tone which shocks the stranger. 
We should not be sm-prised at this. The success we 
have obtained by this form of literature suggests the 
thought that it depicts our ordinary life, when really it 
is remote from the prosaic wisdom of the French masses. 

But above all, the French public has been led away 
from interest in scientific culture by an excess of litera- 



260 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

ture. It lias been indifferent to science; it has had no 
faith in its power. In alleviation we should say that 
the Catholic Church — of which we must never over- 
look the educative influence — has been indefatigable 
in its efforts to cast suspicion on science; and even to- 
day, it is not averse to hearing its failure proclaimed. 
In the meantime, others at our side have been preach- 
ing to a whole nation as a fundamental axiom — and 
chiefly by the channel of the universities — the princi- 
ple of the sovereign importance of Science as a factor of 
wealth and power. In fact, the importance and practi- 
cal bearing of Science are far from being limited to the 
immediate consequences of the discoveries. Funda- 
mentally, the scientific spirit controls the whole ma- 
terial aspect of social life to an increasing extent. As 
M. E. Picard — a mathematician devoted to very 
speculative researches, extremely remote from com- 
mon reality — has very judiciously observed, the sci- 
entific spirit is in no way a particular entity by itself, 
but very simply a continuation of good sense. When 
applied to practical life, it is only the reasoned and ab- 
solute faith in the logical connection of facts and the 
rational prediction of effects from their causes. It is 
thus the antithesis of the ancient religious belief in 
miracles — and in the capacity of a supernatural in- 
tervention to modify things as we desire. Not less is it 
opposed to that attitude, derived in the main from the 
preceding one, according to which it is in no way neces- 
sary to concern oneself with remote previsions. One 
aims always to settle things when confronted by events; 
one counts on chance and finds one's way out; this is 
system D in the language of the trooper. This system 
may not be devoid of elegance; it may enable one to 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 261 

emerge from difficult situations, ingeniously and some- 
times heroically but it is never useful for the purpose of 
building the structure of the future. We have an un- 
fortunate national inclination toward it. We must 
react vigorously against it to the advantage of the scien- 
tific spirit which foresees and organizes and from which 
our adversaries of the moment draw their greatest 
power. The scientific spirit, thus understood, enters 
into the daily practices of the material life of a people 
in proportion as its methods of production, in all fields, 
are sane and fertile. There can be no assurance of social 
prosperity in modern life where this principle is not ap- 
preciated; and in the competition among the peoples, 
the decisive factor is perhaps the degree in which it has 
penetrated the mind of the public and has entered the 
domain of the unconscious. Scientific culture and above 
all the scientific spirit which comes from it and which 
remains identical at its various levels are thus factors 
of capital importance in the formation of the social 
outlook. 

Political centralization — ^cultivated even today by 
the parties in power, as an instrument of control with 
almost as much relish as by Napoleon I — has been 
added today to the preceding causes in paralyzing the 
life of the provinces. Our average provincial cities — 
and even our large cities — make a painful impression 
on anyone coming from English or Swiss towns or from 
elsewhere. All this must be modernized. 

The growth of our intellectual institutions must 
necessarily be bound up with the average intellectual 
development of our ruling classes. Control of the latter 
is an indispensable factor. People who, at a given mo- 
ment, feel the need of progress and endeavor to bring 



262 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

it to pass, are helpless if not supported by public 
opinion. Under Napoleon III, Pasteur, Claude Bern- 
ard, Wurtz, Sainte-Claire Deville, and others sounded 
the alarm in the clearest way, but their appeals fell on 
deaf ears. Nowadays, in spite of the very important 
progress accomplished under the Third Republic, our 
academic institutions have still something antiquated 
about them which reflects the state of mind of the pub- 
lic, and for which the latter is to a great extent re- 
sponsible. 

Despite their new name, our universities have not 
yet stripped themselves of the spirit, the structure, and 
the chains of the Napoleonic faculties. The College de 
France has neither the laboratories nor the resources 
which it deserves. The Museum of Natural History, in 
spite of its souvenirs of Lamarck, Cuvier and Geoffroy 
Saint-Hilaire, periodically invoked, is not the Museum 
with which Paris ought to put in comparison with the 
British Museum, the American Museum, and other 
large foreign Museums. The wealth of the past is not 
sufficient to assure to it the rank which it ought to hold. 
Its library, which is so rich and precious because of its 
age, is not as well furnished as it should be, and the 
inadequacy of its means is not reassuring as to the 
safety of the riches which it does contain. The Ecole 
Polytechnique despite the prestige which its uniform 
possesses in the eyes of the French middle class and the 
social force of the comradeship which it engenders, is an 
anachronism in many respects in modern higher edu- 
cation, as I have already pointed above. The contrary 
would have been surprising if one considers the fact 
that the school has, so to speak, not changed for a cen- 
tury, and it is an utter anomaly that even today the 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE 263 

Ministry of War determines the destinies and the 
regime of a school of engineers ! The Institute too needs 
a rejuvenation in spite of the favor which the general 
public accords to it. 

We must recast all these institutions each one of 
which has had its share of glory and preserves its in- 
trinsic virtues, but altering and coordinating them anew 
so as to adapt them to present needs. At the same time, 
we must endow them all much more considerably than 
at present. Living is becoming more expensive for the 
scientific institutions as for individuals and at a much 
faster rate. The community, that is to say, the state 
must understand this. Public-spirited individuals of 
wealth and culture must help these institutions to be 
equal to their tasks. The richer classes of America 
offer a magnificent example in this respect, thus furnish- 
ing some excuse for the plutocratic regime which is 
sometimes justly condemned by democrats. 

What is most important at the present is to realize 
that great effort will be called for after the war. Our 
race has sufficient resources to justify confidence in its 
future. In the course of these three years, France has 
demonstrated that she is capable of immediate and 
continued effort, whereas in the opinion of many 
strangers, judging from appearances, she was only the 
deposit of a past glory of which only the delicate but 
impotent charm had remained. 

The battle of the Marne has been defined as a strategic 
restoration by the one who by winning it saved France 
and the liberty of the world. But it has also been the 
signal for a moral restoration of the whole world. Those 
who like me were in the United States in 1916 during 



264 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 

those still doubtful but heroic moments of Verdun were 
able to estimate what France had regained in the opinion 
of the world and the credit she had won for herself in 
the future. 

This credit will lapse after a short interval once the 
crisis is passed, and when each people has returned to 
its task, competition will inevitably commence once 
more with new bitterness. But France must maintain 
herself at the level where the events have placed her, 
since August 3, 1914; for this, she must pay the price 
of considerable effort, which will be the more arduous 
as the number of those participating in the struggle will 
have singularly diminished, and diminished by the loss 
of the best units. 

It will therefore be urgently necessary for France to 
secure maximum results from a given effort, in every 
field. France must apply in a judicious manner the 
principles developed by F. W. Taylor in all the spheres 
of her national activity. To this end, she must achieve 
an economic and intellectual recovery, not less neces- 
sary than the strategical recovery of the Marne. She 
must modernize — resolutely and methodically — all 
her institutions, including the scientific, paying no con- 
sideration to the inertia of conservative gerontocracies. 

I should advise those who want to understand mat- 
ters better to visit the United States for a few months. 
There they will realize not merely the necessity of re- 
casting our implements of work and action in modern 
moulds but they will also be encouraged by the admira- 
tion provoked by the effort of France and impressed by 
the idealism which goes into the practical spirit of the 
American people and which drives universities and 



SCIENTIFIC LIFE ^Q5 

scientific establishments at such a rapid rate in the 
path of development and progress. 

It is to this that the little book in hand attempts to 
bear witness; it shall end by asserting once more the 
profound importance of developing the mutual ac- 
quaintance between the men of science and the academic 
institutions of the two countries. Such an acquaintance 
generates not only sympathy but also power. 



APPENDICES 



268 UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES 



P5 

> 
I— ( 

p ;^ 

05 

Ph «^ 

2 i 



^1 

O 

i 





i-H rft ,-1 


_ 00 CO 


<N CO 




•* 1- 


H OS CO rH 




rH '<<H A) II 


uisnoDsi^ 


!>}>(» ;o oi GO >* • • 00 © «o OS OS ■ ■ •* i> o 




00 00 GO rl • • • rH Tf( J> O * ' 


00 <o 






^ <M 




OW50S.rHG0G01>^ OQOb- «5 O l* 


■B^ossnnipj 


rHOO .i>rH»r50iOS ** "OSOSGO ' i-i -^ «0 




XOSrH-rH®<0< --JiOiO 


i ^ 




0*000 OSOOOOO «5 1> 


(N -^ 


UBSiqori;\[ 


i?2^ i^l^S^;:^* * S* * * ^ :* : 


: ^ S 




rH 


»0 rH 




>0«DO 0»ii>-^OS 00 COCDOS OS i> 00 
O <N -^ • rH 00 00 OS • •„ O » 1> O «5 • ■ 1> GO GO 
«5 Tfi GO T^ISH ,-H . .* * GO •<?* OS •• CO rH 00 


sioui[ii 






M5 




OOGOOO -^OOG^Mi O t^GOO 


•^ OS 


Braiojip3 


G0«5i> •G0O<rHO5«.j.rH„ •OOCO'* • • 
®< OO Tf( .^r-^r^ ** * . ©< 1> »0 ■ • 


S b- 

CO r-^ 




r^ r-\ 


«5 00 




j> rH e? o< O X <N O 1> 


OS 


9FA 


GO • 1> rH ^ »r5 . . -GO -00 • • «J0 -GO • 
Tjt'QOi— IrH ... ..O- 


• ^ • 




rH ^ 


GO 




G01>O .i>GO 00 


00 -^ 


pjO|UB;g 


o©»Go:t>i>:;;::;::rH::; 


00 r-i 






00 




J> »0 OS 


7-H 


uojaDnuj 


<S*-i> CO--- 


1* 

CD 




r-* 


rH 




OOOOOS COOCO OS (N »OCO Q<CO O --, 
GO rH 00 • »r5 OS CO -00 • „ (N • rH O • • ©< -^ CO S2 
^ ^ -COOiCO • •* -COOS - -rHt- b- g 


BjuBAi^Jsnuaj; 


snpfdojj snqof 


"^.O..^ O 00 O 

OS GO 1> * • 'CO «5 Wi 

(N •©» • -GO ,-H O GO 








rH 


939IIO0 95ppBa 


OSGOf^OSCOrH-^ i>0 

i> O rH »0 rH e< O •-■>,• • T^ 0» - • • 

^ CO »0 i> GO <Sl . . .^ . . rH ,-1 - - . 


CO M5 


pUB pjBAJBJJ 




COOSrHiOrH 1> G0»ClCO 


QJ 


CO 


ipujoo 


0» 1> ©1 • GO «5 • - • - «5 • - -COCO ■ T-i 


t^ CO 


OSQ^GO -(NrH - • • -rH • - -COtO • r^ 


o >* 






MJ rH 


9S9II03 pj^uj^e: 


•^OSOS OOO »Or> OGOCO rn 


« 


o 


Suipnpui 


rHOOOO -'*»0 -OSrH ■ r-* GO -CO - • - 
OCOCO --^GO --^OO • i-i r-^ • ^ - - • 


^ 


OS 


•Aiufi •Biqinnio^ 


T^ ,-^ r-* 


cc 


«5 




rHCOOO®<GOO <N O r- 


J> 


CO 


ogBOiq^ 


rH-!afl05tOrHO • -CO • - • •!> - - - -OC 




00 


OS 1> W5 rH <N I5< .. <N • - - - rH • - - - OC 


OC 


OS 




T-< 


GT 


GO 








*o 










































m 










































T3 






















• 










































;^ 




















Oi 






















-d 




















"S 






















.2 




















< 






















ft 




















SM 






















Ph 




M 












d o 






















<1 




rs 










I 


11 






- 
















1 


4 o 




1 




\ 
1 


) 


II 






1 

a 






1 
1 




a, 

1 
1 

< 


1 


►^ 


1 

s 

1 




1 
> 


> 

1 




1 


- I 





SCIENTIFIC LIFE 



269 



m 

P O <) 



r ^ 

o 









«5©0©00«5©000000 
r-iO»r5000t>00»0000>0 
OO00OOOr-<G0»O05<0a<»<i> 



1^ 

a.2 

3 O 

12; pi; 









a^ 

o a 



0i«5Oi>l>}>OC0O»0i-H00O0S 



O O © O O 
© © O © © 
©^ © © © © 

©" ©" (N i> (si" 

»0 S> »r5 -^ i> 
»0 T-^ 1> CO 00 
rH »f 1-H ®f 



© © © © 
© © © © 
© © ©© 
x^© © CO 
»*■>#©(» 
CO 00 © ■* 
T-^ 1-^ <3< rH 



)©©©©©©©©©©©©C0©©©© 
>©©©©©©©©©©©©r-i©0©© 
l^©©©©©©©©©©©©'^©©©© 
r©QOOO©GOlO©©iOof'!^<J<-<3H"«5»JOl>er 
iO5C0S0C0C0'#©©CS<©G0©OS«5©©© 
IJ>(^l>O'«f*©©«5G0<N©rHOG0©i— l^^ 



©©©©©©©©©© 
©©©©©©©©©© 
©_ © ©^ © © © ©^ ©^ ©^ © 
»f t> ©'" «f •^'^ ©" ©" io" © tJh" 
©O<©COS<O<O<©00i-H 



:| 


mm 


; ©" 


1—1 I— 1 



©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©o© 
©©©©©©©©©©©©©©o©©©© 
©©©©©©©©©©©o© ©©©©©© 

©©©©rHGOSO©''®rtcr©C)0©GO»C©rHr-r»iO 



>©©©i-lGOSO©C««5©00©GO»C 
>©G0©<5i©l>©-*-«fi'^©*©l>00 
i©i!005i-(OCOrHt>r-<©<Tf*CO»iOCO 



© © © (N 
»* W5 «5 © 




o J2 o « C 13 ,es 13 -^ -^j a t^ k^ ^ a ce i^ 



PRINTED AT 

THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A. 



y 



